I hope you have an excellent holiday and find time for a few sneaky dives to work off the festive food. In the meantime here’s a four minute video from the last trip to keep you amused. This was all shot with my Lumix using just the collective Scurion power of the group for lighting. I spent the trip switching between photos (as seen in last week’s post) and video to capture both sides of the story. The video does come with a minor language warning, so maybe turn the sound down to half power before watching at work.

There’s nothing quite like the joy of successful exploration. Here’s to many more in 2015!

About the cave

Growling Swallet is a major sink in the Junee Florentine karst area in Tasmania. Water from the river that rushes into the cave entrance has been dye traced to emerge in the Junee resurgence, several miles away. Unlike other caves in the area Growling has an entrance that doesn’t require ropes or SRT, just a few very sketchy free climbs. The name describes the noise of the river rushing in when in flood, and as you would expect caving is only possible in low water conditions.

The way through the cave alternates between following the water and climbing up and over it. From a caving perspective this means that even on the way in (usually downhill) there are several large ups to be climbed. On the other hand this provides some downhill on the way out…

About the trip

The intention for the weekend was to carry one set of dive gear, plus a suit for a second diver to the terminal downstream sump. Dreamtime sump is where both water from the entrance and water from a terminal branch disappear underground. The water here is next seen in Niggly Cave before eventually resurfacing in Junee. The estimated distance to the mapped passage in Niggly is only a few hundred metres. More interestingly, the data suggests that a major branch of water should flow into this gap between the two known systems. The sump was dived years ago without success, but with sidemounts and improved equipment and techniques we were somewhat optimistic about making progress.

About the dive

After nearly 5 hours of hauling packs through the cave, we lined up on the bank and watched Steve put his dive gear on. The plan was for him to dive first using the two 7L tanks. Andreas was then going to dive second with the remains of the gas to see if further progress could be made. He crawled off into the water and after watching for about 5 minutes it became obvious this was going to take a while. 35 minutes later he appeared, with survey distances and directions memorised. After a quick transcription onto paper we got the full story.

The sump continues 50m or more through a wide and low silty flattener, requiring a bit of wriggling to get through. It then surfaces briefly into an airbell with no “dry” land, but remains shallow enough that you could stand up. Following this the dive heads back into the water and the passage opens up into swimmable territory. All of this was shallow at less than 3m depth. Despite the feeling that we might get somewhere, I definitely had the view that carrying in the full reel of knotted line was slightly delusional. As it turned out, Steve ran out of line well before approaching his gas limits.

The first photo here is the triumphant return, following survey transcription. The reel has a bit of line left on it due to a lack of suitable tie-offs on the silty floor at the further point reached. And the second photo here is the chorus line of cavers, finding out what happened underwater. Sump diving is not generally a spectator sport so a successful return with news of ongoing exploration is always good news.

Since getting back from my trips after to France and Komodo, it’s been all work on the weekend front. Our Elk resupply trip and a weekend in Mt Gambier to talk at the CDAA AGM were followed by a trip down to Tassie to participate in a cave rescue exercise.

The Tassie exercise was co-ordinated by Andreas of the STC, and partially funded by an ASF grant to get Al Warild down south from NSW to run it. Cave rescues in Tasmania are likely to be vertical affairs and the 4 day course focussed on rigging and lifting stretchers up and out to sunshine. The group attending included cavers from NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and all corners of Tasmania. Personally speaking, it was reassuring to see us all become more competent by the end of Sunday – should I need to be extracted from a deep dark Tasmanian cave, it’s good to know there’s some people who have done a practice run.

More importantly, the process of climbing 20 minutes down into a cave and then 20 people spending the rest of the day co-ordinating a stretcher back up to the top illustrated just how slow a rescue process is likely to be. When the likely distance of a real casualty from the entrance (Murphy’s Law says any incident will always happen at the worst possible time) and the time required to call for help, assemble a team and transport them to the entrance are taken into account, the best course of action is clear – don’t hurt yourself caving! If you must, pick a body part that doesn’t interfere with getting yourself out of the cave.

Another key takeaway was just how high the rigging points need to be to get a stretcher off the top of a pitch and off the ground for tyroleans. What seems sensible for an able-bodied caver climbing off the top of a pitch doesn’t work in quite the same way for a prone stretcher bumping it’s way out of the cave. Something to consider when rigging for exploration where possible.

I was also happy to be using my compact Lumix to take photos rather than my Canon dSLR. I hooked up one of my inon Z240 underwater strobes via a fibreoptic cable and blocked the on board flash with duct tape. This eliminated backscatter from dust and water particles reflecting flash light straight back into the lens. I’m starting to see how this compact set up can work for me and I’ll post more about that next week. It was nice to be able to drop a “tough camera” on a rock and have free hands for the stretcher, then grab it for a few quick shots before putting it down again. Certainly not something I’d want to try with my 5DII in a damp cave and I doubt I would have been able to get these shots while still participating.

About the site

I was down in Bicheno for some reef diving at the start of June as part of the Combined Clubs Weekend. I posted before about the gorgeous orange and yellow sponges and prolific seawhips on the granite boulders down there. The water was blue for the six dives I did, but I gathered from the locals that recent storms had stirred things up. Certainly the weather wasn’t great while we were there and these photos were taken in fairly surgey conditions. This was our last dive of the trip and we were up shallower than the morning dive. Add that to these very cool boulders leaning in to form swim throughs, and we had some high speed (and backwards) swimming through!

About the dive

I haven’t had all that much success with off-camera strobes in the ocean so far. Unlike caves with clear water and darkness, in the ocean the strobes are either hard to see, or simply highlight how much fish poop there is floating around in the water. But when I heard we were heading for swimthroughs and caves it seemed like the ideal dive site to give them another go. JDZ very obligingly agreed to carry one and we headed down into blue water.

The surge through the swimthroughs meant we moved backwards and forwards about 3m between each shot. Luckily the single channel of each one meant there was nowhere else for the water to go, so both camera and model were moving the same speed and distance. With a little bit of imagination you could say everything was still except for the scenery going past at speed. As you can see in the second shot, the walls were coated with sponges taking advantage of the high flow to filter feed.

About the shot

It was a grey day up top, so I adjusted the shutter speed right down to 1/30th to get any blue water out the end of the rock. Even with the very slow shutter speed, the inside of the swimthroughs were lit entirely by strobe light. I like the way the off camera strobe has gone off in the first shot to add some depth to the shot and brighten up the image. The surge was fun, but it would be even better to go back on a still day and place some strobes on the ground through these swimthroughs to really light up the colours. Next time!

About the cave

Tassie has some beautiful caves, which are also known for being somewhat of a summer-only destination. Not that it’s any warmer underground in the JF in summer…but it can be a touch drier. The cave pictured above is JF398, the entrance of which was discovered and tagged back in the 80s. Earlier this year the massive boulder pile that fills the entrance down to 35m below the surface was passed, and the cave named Boulder Jenga. Exploration occurred during one of the driest periods of the year. A small stream above the entrance sinks into the cave and recent rain made our trip last weekend a little wetter than initial exploration.

About the trip

With the key local participants back from overseas caving jaunts, Dave, Sandy and I travelled down from Melbourne to meet Dickon and Andreas in Tassie. The objectives of the weekend were to continue surveying what had already been discovered, have a look at the leads and (of course) take some photos. When rigging the pitch the weekend before Dickon and Andreas had discovered a small sump entrance where previously there was a large draft. This likely means that Boulder Jenga is a summer cave with the way on blocked up with water during winter.

Once we’d squeezed our way down through the boulders and whizzed down the 60m pitch we descended into the base level streamway passage. In addition to the camera gear we’d lugged a small 3L tank and regulator along with us. Surveying and photos make for slow work and by the time we hit the end of the cave we were all a bit chilly. This led to a stand-off over the tank and some discussion on who was stupid enough to jump in the water and see if the sump was a duck under.

I signed up and we all headed through the roof sniff in 8 degree water and 3mm wetsuits. After a bit more streamway passage it became apparent the tiny little mud pool was considered “the way on” and I began to rethink my volunteerism. The idea of taking the tank all the way back out again without using it was a bit painful. While we tested various pools of water for signs of flow, Andreas volunteered to jump in. He made it to about 2m down to report lots of mud and no obvious way on. It’s intriguing, because the water clearly sinks somewhere there, there are signs of a large whirlpool in high-water conditions, and the draft during summer must have come from somewhere. I don’t think this is a mystery that’s going to be solved with the water still there however.

About the photo

Despite the excitement happening at the end of the cave I elected not to take the camera through the roof sniff. The camera usually travels in a small orange pelican case for “dry” caving trips, and this trip I experimented with also wrapping it in cling wrap. By the time we reached the bottom the inside of the pelicase was a lot more damp than I was comfortable with. The photo above was taken earlier in the day as we progressed down through the boulder pile. It certainly contributed to the damp!

As you climb through the boulder pile in the higher reaches of the cave you criss-cross this stream several times. In this case Sandy was climbing back up after checking a hole off the original route. I was happy to get some action shots under the water. Unaccountably, Sandy was not keen on repositioning the off camera strobe in her hand or taking direction on poses. Her posture in the first shot here is completely natural and sums up her opinion of the artistic exercise.

About the cave

I talked about Junee Cave last week, after our long weekend trip two weekends ago. The weekend was photographically focussed and I was keen to capture the straws and decorations in the dry cave between sumps one and two. Since we had to go through the water to get there it seemed silly to miss the opportunity for underwater photography, although I didn’t have high hopes for great images.

About the dive

While the defining feature of For Your Eyes Only may be the straws that line the ceiling, the defining feature of sump one is being cold. And dark. And often very silty. When I last visited in 2009 we had a large group of divers in and out and after the first dives there was very little to see underwater. It’s a relatively short sump and all I really remembered was swimming into black rock walls in the murk as I headed out of the cave at speed.

With my very nice heating very on I was toasty warm for these dives, with the exception of my face. I was also using dry gloves in anger for the first time and the dials on the back on the inons are definitely hard to manipulate. With a short sump and silt pouring off the roof from our bubbles there wasn’t much time for underwater settings fiddling and I was careful to get the camera and strobes sorted before descending.

About the photo

Both of these shots were taken on the second day. I got a few good images on the Saturday dive, but I didn’t have any memories of the underwater landscape. I also took photos in some places where the walls were too far away to light properly in the dark conditions. Areas with nearby walls showed off the cave much better than a diver hovering mid-blackness. I spotted the narrow area in the photo up top as a great spot for a photo, but the silt overtook the frame on Saturday. On Sunday I was a little more prepared and carefully inhaled while swimming through. I turned to catch Andreas following me and the silt cloud just starting to billow out of the ceiling.

The second shot here is the very start of the sump, well inside the cave. Andreas is just inflating his drysuit to follow the line down. I especially like the shadow patterns on the bottom on the right hand size, caused by having one strobe above the rippling surface of the water. For both days we were blessed with good vis. It was great to capture these black walls and green water, so different to white walls and blue water of the Nullarbor caves.

About the cave

Junee is the master drain and resurgence for a wide swath of the Junee-Florentine karst area. Many of the large, deep caves in the vicinity have had their waters dye traced to arrive back on the surface in the river flowing out of Junee. The tourist walking track through the State Park leads to a viewing platform in the forest. A quick clamber over the edge lands you knee deep in the chilly river, and three trips upstream into the dark zone put our dive gear at the edge of sump 1.

About the dive

Sump 1 is dark and silty, with greenish water and black walls. We had relatively good vis on the way through and I’ll share the underwater photos next week. The underwater scenery, pretty though it may be, is not the reason people visit Junee. After the short sump we surfaced into the internal air chamber called For Your Eyes Only.

FYEO is highly decorated with stals and straws over about 300m of large streamway passage. A few years ago I took my compact digital camera through the sump in a dry tube, and used Dean’s off camera strobes to make some passable pictures. Perhaps the greatest achievement was that the camera survived the experience, despite nearly tumbling off the mini-tripod at least once. The decorations had me keen to come back with the right equipment. For this weekend the right equipment included the heated vest from DKG Drysuits which I tested last weekend and which did a fabulous job in the cold water.

About the photo

A photography session in FYEO had all the challenges of dry cave photography (even lighting, natural modelling poses, good angles) with additional diving challenges (8 degree water and an underwater camera rig which weighs 12kgs and should be held at arm’s length for the best angle). Early shots showed it was hard to light the straws without lighting the light brown roof. The image I wanted had pure white straws against a black background, which meant the both the camera and the off camera lighting needed to come up higher to cut the roof out of the picture.

In the first shot I managed a higher camera angle from a small muddy inlet into the main stream, complemented by side-lighting the straws from the right. I was particularly pleased with the gentle off camera lighting so white straws are gently glowing rather than drastically overexposed. The second shot has the straws backlit by a strobe placed behind Andreas and pointing directly towards the camera. There’s a little more roof here but the lighting from behind helps the straws stand out. In both cases Andreas is doing an excellent (and very patient) modelling job.

Surfacing in FYEO some years ago is the reason I kept sump diving in Tassie. It’s not about the underwater, it’s about what might lie on the other side. Fingers crossed for the next exploration trip.

About the cave

These images are from the Junee Florentine in Tasmania, from a cave called Dwarrowdelf. I was down there the weekend before last, with the intention for the trip to refine my SRT technique and get some practise in. After Saturday on the climbing wall in Hobart improving rope lengths, on Sunday we headed to Dwarrowdelf. The cave was selected as it has a series of SRT drops in a row without much (any) horizontal cave in between.

As well as nailing down my skills and improving the speed of my rebelays, I was keen to attempt taking pictures while on the rope. From previous caving adventures I have shots of people leaving the bottom, and appearing or disappearing at the top of the pitch, but not many as yet from mid-pitch. The photographic difficulties here are more physical than artistic – don’t swing into the wall, drop anything essential, or forget that you’re tied into a small piece of string a long way off the ground.

I put the strap back on the camera and slung it over myself before heading up the pitch, with a small pouch on my waist containing the flash. At the desired photo location I would remove my gloves and the lens cap, and juggle them into the pouch while extracting the flash. This only worked because the cave is particularly “dry” for Tassie. Trying this on a remotely wet pitch would be inadvisable without some form of camera protection, as there’s very little opportunity to dry your hands.

About the photo

I quickly discovered that the joy of being on the rope is that you can have any up/down angle you’d like. Need to be a little higher? No problem! What you can’t do is more closer or further away, and given each pitch only had one rope down it I was restricted to the vicinity of the rebelays so both myself and my model could be mid-air. For the bottom pitch we installed a second rope and vastly increased my choice of framing. I also found that both ends of the rope needed to be in the frame to make sense of the picture, less the viewer think the photographer and the model were both standing on the ground.

The photo above is Andreas working to cross a rebelay on the bottom pitch, where we installed a second rope so that I could get a better angle. And the second shot is both Pax and Andreas descending the same pitch, with Pax above the rebelay and Andreas below. I like the way the strobe light highlights the sweep of the wall and I think this may be key to pitch photography – finding the rocks that lead the viewer in. I need a bit more practise to get the truly impressive shots that are possible in these situations. More caving to come!