About the site

I talked about the trip to the water in Niggle Cave two weeks ago, and promised a follow up post on the diving. Niggle Cave is located in the Camooweal region of Far North Queensland, near the border with the Northern Territory. The dry caving effort required to get down to the water level is significant, but with the underwater sections being largely unexplored there’s a lot of incentives to do so. With permission from Parks and the blessing of the local traditional owners, we spent some time expanding the limits of the known.

About the dive

Joel and Ryan spent a day rigging the cave and carrying a lot of the gear in, but after checking out a lot of the dry cave ran out of time to get in the water. So the following day I accompanied them with some more gear down to the water’s edge, and we volunteered Joel to get in for a checkout dive. There was the beginning of  a pre-existing permanent line heading down the rockface and into the water, and Ryan and I watched Joel’s light disappear into the depths.

By the time he returned I had got the camera sorted and jumped in the water. After lugging gear through the hot and humid cave air, the 28 degree water didn’t do much to cool me down and you can see Joel decided to leave the wetsuit behind. The other thing I discovered as I trod water in my shorts and T-shirt with an aluminium camera housing was that the water is very fresh. Lifting the camera to take split shots like the second shot here rapidly put me underwater and sinking.

About the shot

After seeing the limestone bridge formation from the suface above (check out the shot here) I was very keen to get a photo of it underwater. While the water was relatively clear on arrival, all the gear going in the water had already been transported through the muddy cave. This immediately put a silt cloud in the water and created the haze in the photos. Of course, my frantic trying-to-stay-afloat kicking probably didn’t help either.

As is usual by this point in the day, we realised we needed to head for the surface to make it back to camp in time for dinner. While I would have liked to get some more shots here, the increasing amount of mud in the water made for diminishing returns on effort and we left for the day.

Two days later, Joel laid line further into the cave to a maximum depth of 46m and with the tunnel continuing down. The entrance to the dry cave on the surface is too small to fit a rebreather into, and access to the water is not easy. With the cave disappearing into the depths we made a collective decision to leave this one to explorers more intrepid than ourselves, and relocated to Great Nowranie Cave for the remainder of the trip.

About the site

Niggle Cave is located near the Camooweal township, about 25kms from Great Nowranie. While I jumped straight into telling you about the diving in Great Nowranie first, here I figured I’d better explain the “getting to the water” part first. Niggle Cave would have to be one of the more difficult cave accesses I’ve negotiated, and this is coming from someone who trudged 1.3kms through the bush with twin 12L steel tanks.

From the surface, the doline is deceptively small. After you squat down in this shoulder-width hole, you clip into the rope and attempt to manoeuvre through a tight restriction. It’s much easier to get through with your arms above your head, but of course you need at least one hand on the rope to belay down with. This very small hole opens out into a 50m pitch down a huge vertical fissure. Getting in is fun, and trying to SRT out up a rope through a restriction is even more fun.

Pitch negotiated, and after a very short walk, the cave lowers into crawlways. While we had timed the weather appropriately and the crawlways were mostly dry, they weren’t fun. I started counting, where one crawlway ended in the first space you could stand up straight in. By this method there were an even dozen, of which most were sand, the long one was an army crawl through very wet mud, and two were painful pebbles. All of this would have been quite enjoyable for a quick trip through with headtorch and overalls…of course, divers need a few more toys than that. In a team of three we humped tanks and caving bags and ourselves through crawlway after crawlway after crawlway.

About the photo

Previous dive trips here haven’t been very successful, with wet conditions in the cave making crawling more difficult than it needed to be. Paul has also visited here before and, expecting poor conditions, trekked in for a quick look at the water without any dive gear. After viewing the entrance pool in the photo above, he was determined to come back. Once I finally dragged the last bit of dive gear out of the flatteners, I could see why he was so keen.

The photo above was taken from above the entrance pool, with the camera still in the housing to keep the mud out. Despite being a little soft around the edges it shows the tempting double pool with a thin limestone bridge running through the middle. We installed a ladder to provide access down the last 3m drop and geared up…that story is coming, next week.

The second shot is me and my housing, at the fourways junction. The very small entrance restriction meant the protective case for the housing didn’t fit down the hole, so I hand carried the housing through the cave to the water. This shot was taken on the way home with eight crawlways complete and only four to go. Regrettably the next one is the long mud army crawl and the sand had permeated my knee pads and turned the inner surface to sandpaper. It seemed like a good time to stop and take a few photos to capture the moment.

About the area

Last week I started showing off my pictures from the Camooweal trip with the images of the ultimate goal – laying line past the end of the known underwater tunnel. Starting with success is compelling, but it’s not even close to the whole story of the trip. These two photos help illustrate why there’s been so little diving done up at Camooweal, compared to the easily accessible Mt Gambier caves, or even the well-known Nullarbor and neighbouring Roe Plains areas.

The surface layer of black clay in the Camooweal area prevents the rain that falls during the annual wet season from filtering into the ground. Instead the water runs across the surface until it finds a weak point, descends, then runs horizontally again. These fissures and joints are widened by the water flowing through to form the cave. The caves in the area that we accessed all involved a big pitch or two near the surface, then descended into low crawlways before terminating in the sumps we were seeking.

About the cave

Great Nowranie starts with a large doline at the intersection of two faults (I advice checking climbing shoe reviews very thoroughly and get the best ones to stay safe and climb confident). Once the pitch was rigged and the ropes ready to go, we lowered three sets of dive gear and abseiled over the edge. In the second shot here you can see JDZ climbing up to the surface at the end of the day. We’re in the daylight zone at this point, but after 13 hours underground the sun has set and daylight is a bit of a distant memory. Earlier that day, we began the lump in of gear from the bottom of this pitch and through the cave to the second pitch. The roof in this section is at least 20m over our heads, and tree branches wedged between in the ceiling are a reminder of the floodwaters that must come through here in wet season.

After the short and easy walk across rubble in the dark we arrived at the top of the second pitch. Behind this giant hole in the floor there were several windows and pillars into the area behind. Most of the water clearly travels straight down the hole, and we rigged a line from the top of one side to the bottom of the other. Sending the gear down this flying fox meant not having to stand in the drop zone to load and unload.

About the photo

The top photo here was taken of a tank, in a caving bag, coming down the flying fox of the second pitch towards me. The amount of work required to get gear to the water, dive and get out again with enough time to eat and sleep reduced the time and energy available for photos. On the other hand, sending gear up and down pitches was a bottleneck – only being able to send one piece of gear or one person down a rope at a time left the rest of the team waiting and gave me time to put the camera and strobes together.

After unhooking the previous load I used the empty pulley to send a spare strobe up to the top, and you can see it lighting the wall behind Ryan. Down the bottom of the hole I’ve placed a strobe to the left and another to the right to highlight the shape and colour in the rocks. Best of all, the tiny caving lights and the rope twisting up into the dark reveal the size of this hole…would-be cave divers need to be confident of their roping skills to even get close to the water level here.

About the cave

Great Nowranie Cave sits within Camooweal Caves National Park in far north Queensland. Only a short distance from the Northern Territory border, the dirt is red, the flies are plentiful and it’s stinking hot. At this time of year the desert surroundings remind me of the flat Nullarbor plains, but dry creek beds across the landscape are a reminder of the huge rainfall this area sees every wet season. The limestone is much older and harder than down south, forcing the rain to run across the landscape until it can find a fissure. Concentrated force sees fissures open up and widen, funnelling the water underground and creating the caves below.

About the dive

This was our first dive in Great Nowranie, towards the end of the trip. We had spent the previous day rigging pitches and carrying gear down and in through big tunnels and small muddy restrictions. After time spent in other caves we were on a fairly tight schedule and Joel and I were attempting about 15 different tasks on this single dive. Joel carried a Contour camera strapped to his wrist to capture video of the dive, as well as a pinger to place at a designated spot in the cave. We both took a stage tank to drop a few hundred metres in for the following day’s dive. Joel took the reel you can see in the photo above, with plenty of fresh knotted line for when we reached new territory. And most importantly, I took the camera and Joel took the off camera strobes to bring you these pictures.

The tunnels in Great Nowranie bottom out between 25m and 30m depth, so we had a limited amount of time as our deco obligation crept up. Given the number of things we were trying to accomplish, I think we were both a bit surprised when we reached the end of the line and tied in. The second shot here shows the end of the known tunnel and the start of the exciting part.

About the shot

The tunnels in Great Nowranie wind from right to left to right and back to left again. Combined with the pebbled floor, red mud banks and white limestone roof, it feels very much like swimming along a small streamway. The wet season flows bank the pebbles up behind each corner. Against the line there are gum leaves and twigs washed down from the desert above. The shot above shows the tunnel as it turns (again) to the left, with Joel pulling the line out from the reel to move around the corner.

The joy of exploration is that there could be anything around the corner. I love this shot because it’s the first I have of actual reeling into new territory exploration, despite coming close a few times before. Cave diving exploration is not easy to capture on camera, with explorers keen to rush off into the distance rarely prepared to make allowances for the photographer. Joel was not only reeling out, he also managed to keep the off camera strobe pointing in the right direction and these shots have come out better than I could have hoped. I hope they give a small sense of the feel of turning a corner that no-one has turned before, and going to see what’s next.