Diving Jenolan Caves

 Cave diving, Caving, NSW  1 Response »
Jul 072014
 
Diving Jenolan Caves

About the site Jenolan Caves are a huge tourist attraction up in the Blue Mountains of NSW. The extensive show cave system sees thousands of visitors every year. The local caving groups are still in exploration mode in the further reaches of the cave, adding to the map each year. It’s been three years since I last dived Jenolan Caves. That trip was memorable for the first dive on Saturday morning being the only one we did – 10 minutes after getting into clear water, a tidal wave of mud turned up. Flooding rain meant diving was off for the rest of the weekend and with many of the paths flooded out and closed to tours we went for a [read more…]

Seawhips in Bicheno

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  3 Responses »
Jun 172014
 
Seawhips in Bicheno

About the site Bicheno is a small town up on the northern end of the east coast of Tasmania. With prevailing south westerly winds through winter the waters are relatively calm and the diving a (very) short boat trip from shore. If I was living in Bicheno I’d strongly consider buying a nice underwater scooter rather than a boat. If you were feeling enthusiastic the dive sites are swimmable distance. But we were there for the 2014 Combined Clubs Weekend and had the pleasure of going out with Bruce from Bicheno Dive and his very nice boat. About the dive The shot above is from the first dive of the long weekend. We jumped in and dropped down into clear [read more…]

The Cathedral in Piccaninnie Ponds

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier  1 Response »
Jun 032014
 
The Cathedral in Piccaninnie Ponds

About the site Pics is a gorgeous dive. The site earned a RAMSAR listing in 2012 and early last year works were carried out to slightly raise the water level and flood an additional 25ha of wetlands. I dived there earlier in the year with a film crew working on a shoot for the History Channel. We had a brilliant day of sunshine and very clear water, and I was keen to get back to shoot some stills for myself. About the dive Diving here is a very vertical experience. The cave is a narrow rift from the surface down to 40m. In places it’s cut away underneath and on a normal scuba dive the exhaled bubbles run up the [read more…]

Diving the end of Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  1 Response »
May 282014
 
Diving the end of Elk River

Last weekend was our twelfth trip into Elk River cave. We missed the Easter trip with a few people away (out on the Nullarbor, in my case) and it was good to be back two months after the last trip. In March Steve spent his time beyond sump 5 pinning down and re-routing the existing line to make the inevitable zero-vis exits as painless as possible. This work, and the stash of tanks staged at the end, set us up well for a push beyond the end of the line this trip. In addition to putting Andreas in sump 7 to push, I also intended to accompany him with camera in hand. On previous trips I had carried the camera [read more…]

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…]

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…]

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