Restrictions in Olwolgin Cave

 Cave diving, Roe Plains  No Responses »
May 062014
 
Restrictions in Olwolgin Cave

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 [read more…]

Footage from Upstream Olwolgin Cave

 Cave diving, rEvo, Roe Plains  2 Responses »
Apr 272014
 

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, [read more…]

Elk River trip report

 Cave diving, Victoria  No Responses »
Apr 082014
 

It’s been a little while since my last update here. I find I’ve gotten into the habit of posting and talking about the photos from the most recent weekend, which leaves me in a spot of trouble when there either aren’t any, or I’m not able to share them. So while I can’t show you last weekend’s filming trip, I can share our latest Elk River adventures (even without pictures). Three weekends ago we had a great trip into Elk River sans camera. The joint purposes of the trip were to remedy the line in sumps 6 and 7, and to place dye in the stream for tracing. With a smaller team than the last few trips we cut the [read more…]

Sump one in Junee Cave

 Cave diving, Tasmania  1 Response »
Mar 182014
 
Sump one in Junee Cave

  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 [read more…]

Straws in Junee Cave

 Cave diving, Tasmania  2 Responses »
Mar 112014
 
Straws in Junee Cave

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 [read more…]

Eyeballs in the murk at Mornington Pier

 Macro, Ocean diving  1 Response »
Mar 042014
 
Eyeballs in the murk at Mornington Pier

About the pier I’ve dived at Mornington Pier a lot. It’s a convenient location for gear testing – the closest “real” dive location to me where you can park your car right next to the ladder and climb into the water. I did more than a few dives here in preparation for my cave diving courses, running lines between the pylons and getting used to new equipment. The pier is under (re)construction at the moment. To reduce wave action on the moored boats the early section has had baffles installed. These are large sheets of plastic fitted to the outside of the pylons on both sides. The new walls go down to between half and one metre off the bottom [read more…]

 Older Entries  Newer Entries