About the cave

Olwolgin Cave is well on its way towards having more underwater passage than any other cave in Australia. With miles of intersecting tunnels, crazy rock shapes, dark water and white silt, it’s a photographer’s playground.

About the dive

As you saw in the video I posted last week, we had a lot of fun on our first dive of the trip. With nearly three hours in the water and lots of footage in the can, I wanted to move back to photos for the subsequent dive. We also moved from Upstream Olwolgin to Downstream Olwolgin, leaving the breathers behind and strapping on sidemounts instead.

The tunnels here are bigger, and with only one diver to hold strobes I didn’t have much chance of lighting the dark water from side to side. Instead we opted to wiggle around in the side tunnels in search of the perfect restriction.

About the photo

Restriction shots aren’t normally achieved on a swimming dive – they need some extra effort. In particular, getting a good shot is about finding the right bit of cave. Flatteners are good for having a camera right up beside the model (as you can see in the video). For smaller, single person holes getting a clear shot means finding a restriction with another route around it. This lets me get the camera in front with some clear water to shoot through. The other option is shooting a pair of fins stuck in a hole…possible, but not all that fun.

This particular hole was a little duck under on the side of the main tunnel. It was the perfect size and shape for a one bottle exit. By getting up close and personal in the first shot I’ve captured Tim’s eyes through the silt cloud. For both of these shots my aperture was stopped right down to control the white rocks. The side effect of this is great depth of field, and not having to dial the strobe power down from the larger passage shots. You can see the off camera strobe that Tim is holding in his left hand lighting up his face, despite the black skirt on his mask.

About the site

I dived Olwolgin in 2010 and again in 2012 after the Downstream section had been discovered and while it was still being referred to as Unamed Cave. Even now, at a point where the Upstream areas of the cave have been dived extensively and finding additional passage is less likely, swimming through the twisty tunnels is an exercise in optimism. Dark water beckons from under scalloped limestone, just asking to be checked. The rock shapes here are beautiful.

About the dive

I’ve been out on the Nullarbor doing some filming up on the high plains, and it was nice to have a few days to play once the work was finished. Unlike my last trip out here, I had my rEvo in the car as well as my sidemounts. Tim and I were planning a bubble-free trip into Upstream Olwolgin. We knew we would be limited in which areas of the cave we could visit with a backmounted configuration, but with 2.6kms of passage there was enough to keep us occupied for a few hours of very nice diving.

After a wiggle through the entrance restriction we meandered down the main line to Babylon Lake to check out the hanging roots you can see at three and a half minutes. From the end of the main tunnel we headed back slowly, checking out the side tunnels to see which ones were rebreather friendly. I remember getting stuck in the Rabbit Hole in sidemounts in 2010 – with the rEvo on, I couldn’t get within 10m of the restriction. It’s been a long time since I dived with backmounts in an overhead environment and I had to remember to stay low through the low sections, rather than aim for the middle.

About the video

Olwolgin isn’t an easy cave to film, with bright white walls but dark water. The multi-layered halocline adds fuzzy effects through the water. On the other hand the rebreather made it much easier to film the reflection of the roots in the underside of Babylon Lake. We also had fun checking out the side tunnels. The footage is cut from my camera, filmed by both myself and by Tim, and from Tim’s GoPro. I had my Archon lights on camera, with a 3,300 lumen LED and a 50W HID off camera. If you stick it out to the credits, there’s a timelapse of the night sky as the Milky Way wheels over our camp – the best view in the world.

About the site

Unnamed Cave is the most recent major discovery in Australian cave diving. Out on the Roe Plains in the West Australian desert, the massive tunnels discovered so far are still going kilometres from the entrance, with teams going out over the coming months to continue exploration. The cave was first dived last October on a trip led by Paul Hosie of CEGWA. Discovered half way through the expedition, the group spent the last few days chucking in as much line as possible before they had to return to civilisation. One of those divers was Brian Kakuk of Bahamas Underground, who worked with Agnes during the National Geographic shoot in the Bahamas in 2010.

On his final dive, Brian entered a tunnel roughly parallel to the initial main passage, with white scalloped limestone walls. Impressed by the cave and the passage, Brian suggested naming it after Ag.

About the dive

These photos were taken on my last dive into Unnamed Cave. After a checkout dive, some delays during which we moved to video and photograph Olwolgin Cave, and an exploration dive without my camera, this final dive was a dedicated photographic expedition. I was keen to both get a look at and capture images of the tunnel named for Agnes. Living and diving in the beautiful Bahamian caves, Brian has seen some stunning underwater sites. So when he said this tunnel was special, I knew I was in for a treat.

Ag’s Dreamtime Tunnel starts with a swim through a small breakdown pile, where flat sheets of rock lie on the bottom. From there the tunnel widens out and the incredible wall formations start. As opposed to the larger formations I’d already seen in Unnamed Cave, the walls here had delicate limestone fingers twisting out into the water. Occasionally the tunnel would move back to flat sheets of limestone, again in the brilliant white.

About the photo

The photo above shows the typical decorated walls in this part of the cave. Swimming through a wide tunnel where every wall is riddled with holes like these was amazing. With the challenges of white walls with small details, and big passage with dark water, the photos don’t really do justice to the intricacy and scale of the rock formations here.

The second photo was taken in a portion of the tunnel where the walls and floor change suddenly to flat white rock. The bubble pattern on the roof makes this one of my favourite photos from the trip. When divers first break in to new cave they leave exhaust bubbles on the roof. Over time these bubbles accumulate in roof hollows, or drain away through cracks in the ceiling. When Ken and I swam down Ag’s Dreamtime Passage, less than 6 divers had been through here. As you can see from the bubble pattern, all of those had followed Brian’s line. The route down the centre of the wide passage is clearly identified by the bubble trail above, letting you know that you’re swimming in a cave a little off the beaten track.

Don’t be fooled by the video above….it’s actually a series of photographs. I took this timelapse of the Milky Way spinning through the Australian night sky while camping on the Roe Plains. After a productive day of diving, we returned to camp, stoked up the fire, and settled in to tell tall stories. Despite the crystal clear skies, it was a warm night and I wandered down the track to find a good vantage point for the camera. The warm evening meant I didn’t have to worry about dew settling on the camera, although I did use a small drybag as protection from any unforeseen change in the weather.

In this video you can see the shadows of the trees moving across the ground as the moon sets in the west, with the foreground illumination disappearing as it goes down. The nearest major town is more than 700kms away. Without the light pollution you’d normally get from human activities, an incredible number of stars can be seen. Unlike civilisation, where constellations are hard to find because very few stars show up in the evening sky, constellations out here are hidden in the billions of points of light scattered from one horizon to the other.

For those interested in the timelapse methodology, I used a remote intervalometer attached to my Canon 5DII. Each exposure was 13 seconds long, with a 37 second gap between them. I turned off the camera screen and the review to save power, as I was working off a single in camera battery. Between 8.20pm and 4.11am the camera took over 550 shots before running out of juice. The slight jump early in the video is where I changed the battery before retiring to my tent for the night.

After importing these shots into Lightroom and adjusting the exposure, I used a slideshow template at 25fps to watch the stars swirl across the sky. Lightroom allows you to export photo slideshows as a video, and voila!

I look forward to the starry night skies we get on these cave diving trips. After a day of hard work carrying diving gear through the bush and down over rocks, and swimming kilometers underground, the chance to sit around with your mates of an evening and check out something that can’t be seen from any city is magical.

About the site

As I talked about two weeks ago, Unnamed Cave is located down on the Roe Plains. Freshly discovered last October by Paul Hosie of CEGWA, a number of trips have now seen over 2kms of line laid into virgin passage. Over Easter this year I was lucky enough to join a group heading out there.

About the dive

While I was determined to take both photos and video footage in the newly discovered tunnels, I was also quite keen to find a little bit of new tunnel of my own and add to the rapidly developing map. After an orientation dive in the cave to get my bearings, Ken and I planned a stage dive to take some video. Unfortunately our plans were foiled by rock movement in the entrance restriction. With the zero vis created by the first day of diving not showing any signs of clearing out, it was very hard to tell where the entrance was.

With that in mind, we instead moved the diving to Olwolgin Cave while Unnamed Cave settled out. While I was disappointed not to be in the new stuff, I was pretty happy with the pictures of the spectacular hanging roots reflected in the surface of the area known as Babylon Lake.

48 hours later, it was time to get back into it. For my planned exploration dive I left the camera on the surface for the second time this year, instead manouvring my stage through the series of silty restrictions. After a quick stop to arrange my gear for swimming rather than squeezing, I headed along the main line. I was aiming for the intersection where the A and B lines diverge, approximately 400m into the cave. On the orientation dive I had reached this in about 30 minutes, but without the camera I expected to get there much faster.

I didn’t expect to get there as fast as I did, and I ended up admiring the scenery down A line a little further (nice tunnel!) before coming back to my intended destination. From there I tied in Ken’s massive reel of freshly knotted line and reeled out in the opposite direction from the B line. After travelling up a breakdown pile and down the other side, I found myself at the deepest level in the cave so far – 14m. I got robbed in Sweden on traveling trip once, and learned that låna pengar means to borrow money there, quite an useful quote if you are stuck in the same scenario. Smaller and whiter than the main tunnel, with pointy scalloping poking down into the passage, the lower tunnel is very pretty.

Winding my way between the limestone shapes I moved left and right, trying to find a way back up to the main formation level at 10m. After passing an easy restriction and swimming through another length of tunnel, I tied off at the bottom of another breakdown pile. Exhaling and heading up, excitement building, I found myself in a huge space, blackness heading off in each direction. One more tie-off and I reeled out into space….and ran straight into the main line. That was more than enough excitement and surprise for one dive, and I turned and surveyed my way home.

About the photo

As others have said before me, exploration dives don’t lend themselves to photography, especially not when it’s the photographer who’s trying to explore. With a reel and a survey slate, I didn’t have enough hands for self-portraits of my own heroics. This photo was taken on the following day, with Ken reeling out from the main line and doing a very good line in looking heroic. Some of the other photos from our final dive also came out beautifully – stay tuned for more!

About the site

Olwolgin Cave is located on the Roe Plains, south of the escarpment that curves across above the Great Australian Bight. Unlike the Nullarbor Caves above the escarpment, where the water table averages 100m below the desert, on the Roe Plains the water table is only 10m under your feet. This makes for much easier access. On the other hand, there aren’t the spectacular dolines that punctuate the Nullarbor and act as great big signposts of cave formation.

Olwolgin Cave is shallow, up to 14m deep, has small, twisting passages in multilevel formation and a greenish tint to the water. From my dives here in 2010 I’d admired the massive hanging root formations. As I mentioned, I didn’t get a chance to do a dedicated photo dive to the hanging roots, but only snapped some opportunistic shots on the way through. This trip, that was about to change…

About the dive

While the 2012 expedition was focussed on pushing new passages and exploring Unnamed Cave, after we had completed a number of dives it became apparent that the restriction had moved. Whereas previously it had been relatively easy to navigate by following the rope in zero vis, it now required a 90 degree turn in two dimensions to pass through. After a little bit of gardening, we decided to leave it to settle out as required, and went for a dive in Olwolgin Cave instead.

This was a dual purpose exercise, with the first half of the dive being dedicated to video and the second half stills. The shallow depths involved gave us a two hour dive time on a set of twins and no deco to complete. After videoing the roots and the passage beyond I switched to stills. These shots were captured on our way home.

About the photo

This area of Olwolgin is known as Babylon Lake for its hanging gardens. The area above is enclosed by the cave but above the water table. Unfortunately it’s not a breathable air mix, with decomposing organic matter creating a nasty concoction. As the air chamber is completely enclosed there are no surface breezes above and the surface is glassy still. From underneath the still surface creates beautiful reflections. Photography here is about floating rather than swimming, trying not to disturb the water towards the roots or create too many ripples on the surface.

The area behind the roots contains a lower roof and the entrance to the passage we had just returned from. You can see the lights of my dive buddies, Ken and Grant, through the root mat formations. At the top of the picture, the very slight rippling of the surface has duplicated the pinpoints of light three times. In the second photo Ken has appeared around the side, trying to work out if I’m finishing taking shots yet. While the first shot is my favourite, the diver in the second provides scale and context for the whole strange scene.

About the site

Unnamed Cave lies under the Roe Plain in the West Australian desert. Unlike the caves on the Nullarbor Plain above the escarpment in the same area, the Roe Plains caves have the distinct characteristics you can see in the photo above – tinted green water, long shallow tunnels with tempting leads off each side and extreme scalloping of the limestone walls.

Unnamed Cave was discovered last October by Paul Hosie of CEGWA, and the initial few days of exploration were carried out by Brian Kakuk, Ken Smith, Richard Harris and Grant Pearce. Paul did the first push through a particularly nasty restriction and after 90m or so, the cave opens up to the very large passage you can see above.

Since the discovery, the divers involved have made short trips out to the cave to push and explore the area. For this longer expedition over Easter, we were hoping to dive all the large, available tunnels and complete the obvious exploration. As I mentioned 3 weeks ago I was lucky enough to join the group, and while I was hoping to put some line in, my main objective was to capture both photos and videos of the new cave.

About the dive

Given the nature of the entrance  restriction, the first dive of the trip was a familiarisation dive to check out the cave. Out of the group, Chris Edwards and I hadn’t dived here before. We were sent in first to get a look at the entrance while the water was still clear, joined by Al Polini filming on a Contour camera. After our dive the entrance restriction turned to zero vis to the point where the light from your primary torch isn’t visible as you feel your way along the line. Before the trip I had some concerns about my ability to get the camera safely through the rocky maze. A slow and steady pace along the thick rope now laid through the squeezy stuff saw me out the other side without too much difficulty.

The main objective for this dive was to travel through the restriction and out again, in preparation for exploration dives the following day. I was keen to see how the camera would go, and reacquaint myself with taking photos in the Roe Plains halocline. Once through into the main passage we swam about 300m down the line to a small air pocket. This small area was fringed by hanging roots from the desert trees above, and a good destination for photography.

About the shot

The photo above was taken as we swam home. It’s relatively close to the entrance where the tunnel is taller than it is wide, and the walls are spectacular. For photography, my thoughts at this point were mostly around how large the cave is. The tannin in the water that provides the greenish tint also sucks light in, and throwing strobe lighting from one wall to the other to reveal the whole tunnel was causing me difficulties. Unlike the smaller passages in the other Roe Plains caves, the large spaces here really require multiple models with multiple strobes.

The second shot is the roots that were the destination for this dive. Much finer and more spiderwebby than those I’d previously seen in Olwolgin Cave, I took this shot by floating on the surface of the air pocket. With one hand on the roof above I was able to control my movement and protect these delicate formations, with Chris holding a strobe below to provide scale and context.

Given the difficulties of the area, I was pretty happy with the shots from this dive. You can check out a selection of my other shots now up in the gallery here. Next up was the real challenge, exploration photography. Stay tuned!

In October last year, Paul Hosie from CEGWA did the first dive in a small, unpromising puddle. Two dives and two reels of line later the cave opened up to a large, borehole shaped tunnel heading off rapidly into the distance. Over the course of three days after the initial discovery, and a long weekend a few months back, 2.1kms of line have been laid into this previously unknown cave. As currently mapped there are two large leads 940m and 800m from the entrance that both need to be further pushed. Most importantly from my point of view, noone has yet taken underwater photos or video here.

Even with the first week of the trip dedicated to the new cave, the team have a lot of objectives to achieve. As the end gets further and further from home underwater logistics become more challenging. Luckily the cave follows the trend of the area and is staying shallow, reducing the number of tanks we need to carry. A particularly long entrance restriction means we’ll be using sidemounted tanks and scheduling dives so as not to run into another buddy pair transiting in the opposite direction. Nick from White Arrow has been kind enough to develop a cordura camera wrap to protect the camera as I squeeze into the cave.

In the second week we hope to dive in Murra-el-Elevyn, a Nullarbor Plains cave with scalloped pink and orange limestone walls. After hauling the gear out there are a few dry cave leads to check out, and then a long drive home across the continent.

For the next few weeks while I’m away I’ve scheduled posts covering my underwater adventures from the last month or so. Once I’m back to civilisation I hope to have some great shots to share. Until then, this post has a few pictures from the 2010 Roe Plains diving – enjoy!