Underwater junk in sinkholes

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier  No Responses »
Apr 292013
 
Underwater junk in sinkholes

About the cave These two photos were taken in a small sinkhole south of Mt Gambier. I dropped down on a rope from the paddock above, stopping half way down to survey the entrance lake covered in floating bottles and other debris. Directly under the entrance is a huge cone of stuff…a lot of old fencing wire, bottles and tins, 44 gallon drums and other unidentifiables. The water around all of this was crystal clear, so the challenge was working out how to get dive gear on and get in without spiking myself or my drysuit on anything sharp. About the dive Having navigated my way off the pile and [read more...]

Shadow aliens in Weebubbie Cave

 Cave diving, Nullarbor  No Responses »
Apr 222013
 
Shadow aliens in Weebubbie Cave

About the dive With the back end of the main Weebubbie tunnel down at 40m, and the roof of the railway tunnel around 20m, long dives to the end mean a lot of deco back under the lake. After 90 minutes of photography, swimming and scootering in the depths Stefan and I had 60 minutes to kill up in the shallows. Rather than scissors, paper, rock competitions as the minutes crawled by, we decided it was time for some photographic experimentation. One of the joys of cave diving is swimming through darkness and watching the walls light up with wandering dive light beams. If you lead the dive, you might [read more...]

Elk River past sump 4

 Cave diving, Victoria  4 Responses »
Apr 152013
 
Elk River past sump 4

About the cave By the looks of things, Elk River is going to be taking up a lot of my time this year. Elk (aka the Murrindal Potholes Eastern Master Cave) is the streamway system underlying the Buchan Potholes Reserve. The streamway was first discovered in 2006 by the VCLT and the sump first passed by Jim Arundale, later joined in exploration by Agnes Milowka. This weekend just gone the cave has been extended to nearly 1.7kms with a fantastic dive through sump 7 and beyond by Steve Fordyce to add 115m of line, assisted by Ken Murrey. As the end gets further and further from home, the effort required to [read more...]

Shrimp on the wreck of the Ozone

 Macro, Ocean diving, Wrecks  No Responses »
Apr 082013
 
Shrimp on the wreck of the Ozone

About the site I’ve been talking a lot about cave diving recently…because that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing. I rectified that this weekend with two lovely dives out in the Bay. The wreck of the Ozone lies very close to shore and half out of the water at Indented Head, on the Bellarine Peninsula. I waded out towards the isolated danger marker and the struts of the wreck sticking up, and I reckon there were only a few times during the “dive” where I wouldn’t have been able to stand up. The hull stretches out flat on the sand and then there’s a few sticky-up bits down one end. [read more...]

A shot in the dark in Weebubbie Cave

 Cave diving, Nullarbor  2 Responses »
Apr 012013
 
A shot in the dark in Weebubbie Cave

About the trip I’m winding my way down through the Adelaide Hills this morning, after watching the sunrise peek through the clouds. After time spent in the desert the road signs seems like information overload and there’s a lot of people around. We spent the last week at Weebubbie Cave, just over the West Australian border. Weebubbie is beautiful, and not just because you have to appreciate something once you’ve put in so much hard work to get there. Weebubbie has massive tunnels lined with white limestone and full of crystal clear water. From my point of view it was basically a week long photo shoot and I certainly flattened a [read more...]

Rocks, reflected

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier  No Responses »
Mar 252013
 
Rocks, reflected

About the cave The photo above was taken under “Lake Ayre”, which is on the gold line in Tank Cave. Given its convenient location I usually swim under it at least once on a weekend in Tank, on the way home from the further reaches of the cave. It’s a completely enclosed air space composed of bubbles exhaled by passing divers. When first approached from back in the tunnel, you can look up and see the still, mirrored surface. Once divers swim underneath and exhale the ripples begin, spreading outwards to the walls on either side. About the shot As I was putting together my talk for OZTeK last weekend [read more...]

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