Australian Geographic - 09.2019 - 10.2019

44 Australian Geographic

highest known point of one and the lowest of the other to chart

a new depth for the system. And that was exactly what I was

trying to do.

In this remote, lonely place, I felt nervous: about being so far

from home, about whether I’d missed the connection point and

about whether the old line had washed away. Suddenly, I spotted

the old orange guideline I’d left behind years earlier. I swam over

and tied it to the line I was using to mark my route now. It was

a satisfying connection, literally.

With this dive, our team had discovered a link between the

Niggly Cave and Growling Swallet systems. And by proving the

caves are joined, we’d set a new depth record of 397.7m for

Australia’s deepest cave system. That may seem trif ling com-

pared with the deepest cave in the world – Veryovkina Cave in

Georgia, which is more than 2200m deep – but finding the

connection point fulfilled a decades-long quest by cave explorers

to learn where and how two of Australia’s deepest caves join up.

O

UR EXPEDITION in May involved four days underground

in Niggly Cave. Niggly is part of the Junee-Florentine

karst, which is home to more than 600 documented cave

entrances and contains most of Australia’s deepest caves. I was part

of a 10-strong expedition crew of cavers – speleologists – from

Southern Tasmanian Caverneers (STC) caving club.

Being an experienced caver and technical diver, I was the

expedition’s push diver. Unlike regular cave diving, push diving

involves exploring previously uncharted areas, with the help of

support personnel. There can only be one such diver on an

expedition like this because of the huge effort it takes to haul a

complete set of diving gear through to the terminal sump. We’d

spent most of Day 1 getting to the sump: hiking through tem-

perate rainforest to reach the cave’s mouth, squeezing through

na r row subter ra nea n pa ssages in the cave’s upper sect ions, absei l-

ing down vertical shafts deep within the cave, and zipping over

an underground waterfall on a f lying fox we’d installed previously.

STC members have been exploring caves in Junee-Florentine

for many years. In early 2015, I’d dived Dreamtime Sump,

the pool at the end of Growling Swallet. It was the precursor for

our May expedition. When the Dreamtime tunnel had become

too remote to pursue, we’d resolved to try from the other side.

But nobody knew where the stream entered Niggly.

Finally kitted up and having

just about run out of excuses,

it was time for one last photo.

Bossland

Nig g l y Cave

Dreamtime Sump

(2015 dive)

Wish you were

here section

Dreamtime Stonedown

To Growling

Swallet

entrance

PHOTO CREDITS, TOP LEFT: STEFAN EBERHARD; BOTTOM AND INSET: FRASER JOHNSTON

There’s no escape from admin, even camped 350m

underground. Plotting survey data on a smartphone

helped dictate plans for the next day.

With the connection made and the team reunited,

a round of cheesy high-fi ves seemed appropriate.