Triggerfish in Tank Cave

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier  No Responses »
May 272013
 
Triggerfish in Tank Cave

About the cave Tank Cave, Mt Gambier has kilometres of crystal clear, shallow tunnels perfect for testing things out. You can see the different areas in these two photos from the same dive – small twisting light-walled tunnels vs large dark chambers. All in the same still and clear water, so great fun for photography. About the dive Over the course of the weekend we dived down the gold lines and through J and K section, followed by a long swim to GS tunnel yesterday. All of the dives involved a trip out or a trip home under Lake Ayre, one of my favourite places to take photos. Taking photos under this huge reflective surface is tricky. The chamber is [read more…]

Self portraits in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  1 Response »
May 202013
 
Self portraits in Elk River

About the trip Although I didn’t take very many photos on our last weekend trip into Elk River, I wanted to share a couple more of them with you. Last week I talked about getting shots of Sandy coming through sumps 2 and 3 and the difficulty of staying ahead of the silt to get a shot through clear water. On the same trip I was also keen to get a shot in the first downstream sump. Jim Arundale was the first person to pass sump 1. Over a number of attempts he pushed his way through the short underwater distance to the other side. The most pertinent feature of the first sump isn’t the length though, it’s the height. [read more…]

High speed underwater photography in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  3 Responses »
May 132013
 
High speed underwater photography in Elk River

About the site We were back in Elk River streamway this weekend, hoping to survey, tidy up some line and have another look at the end. Elk River currently consists of 6 downstream sumps that we have passed, and a seventh sump that surfaces twice in air bells and continues underwater. It’s over 1.5kms of hard caving to the known end. There are lots of interesting bits – crawling over gravel dragging tanks, sinking in deep mud, squeezing through vertical rift passages and lowering gear through breakdown piles. My favourite bit of the second trip was my push dive at the end into the sixth sump. Unlike the muddy soup I’d been crawling, wading and wriggling through sump 6 was [read more…]

Two years on the web

 Other  4 Responses »
May 062013
 
Two years on the web

I paid an unexpected bill for web hosting this week, and realised that this post marks the second anniversary for this website. Given I was afraid to start until I had ten pre-written articles for fear I’d spend a lot of time setting up a site and then not be able to create enough content, I’ve come a long way! This post is my 118th article, each with a couple of photos and some thoughts on how they were taken. If anything my diving has become more regular and it’s rare that I’m not in the water at least once a week. Most Mondays I’m therefore well placed to write up the best shots from my last dive or two. [read more…]

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 into the water with dive gear attached we set off [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 see yourself in shadow outline, swimming along the wall of [read more…]

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