Tasmanian cavers set new depth record for cave exploration in Australia
A group of cavers has just completed an extraordinary four-day journey deep below Tasmania | WATCH
A group of cavers has set a new depth record for cave exploration in Australia, and achieved a decades-long quest to connect two of Australia’s deepest caves.
The team of 10, linked to the Southern Tasmania Caverneers, claimed the feats during a just-completed expedition to find a link between the Niggly and Growling Swallet cave systems, Australia’s deepest and fourth-deepest caves respectively.
Their expedition, camping in caves below Mt Field National Park, northwest of Hobart, for four days, announced it had over the weekend set a new depth record — 395m — beating the previous depth of 389m.
However, expedition leader, cave diver Stephen Fordyce, said the greater achievement for those involved was connecting the two cave systems; a quest of cavers for decades. “One of Australia’s most perplexing underground puzzles has been solved,” said Mr Fordyce.
The group spent about seven hours just lowering gear into the cave. “We abseiled 250m on ropes and then went across a waterfall on a flying fox, which we had previously rigged up,” he explained.
“I then went off and did a pretty lonely and scary dive for 100 minutes. I had to follow the cave underwater — essentially negotiating a maze underwater, while laying guide lines so I could find my way out — to find where the passage connected into the other cave.
“The dive was horizontal for about 250m … I picked a left wall and followed that a lot of the time. Then at times it would get too tight and so you have to go back and around. There were a couple of really low restrictions where I wasn’t sure I could get through and I had to really wriggle.”
The moment of meeting up with the other cave system, proving they were connected, was special. “It was pretty cool because four years before I did a dive from the other direction and left a guide line there,” Mr Fordyce said.
“So I was able to swim up and see the guide line that I put in four years ago, and tie the new guide line to the old guide line and put a marker saying ‘this is the connection point’.”
The group already was plotting its next adventure in the same Junee-Florentine cave system, which Mr Fordyce said was home to 600 caves, with 50 km of underground passages explored to date.
“The support team found a kilometre of new passage and I did some other diving and found a passage going towards another cave we are trying to link to 3km away,” he said.
“The connection and the depth record are fantastic but we’re already past that and planning for the next connection and the next exploration. There’s heaps to do.”