An Image
When I first learnt to dive just over nine years ago, a poster hung on one of the doors inside the dive shop. It was a dark, underexposed photo of a diver in the foreground with the walls of cliffs on either side of him and crystal clear water around him, so clear that you could see the surface of the water, distant in the background. The inscription at the bottom of the poster read “Piccaninnie Ponds”. That photo captured my imagination and held it.
A Hidden Secret
Five years later, while working in
To get to Piccaninnie Ponds, I drove to Mt Gambier. The two-laned road from Mt Gambier sweeps and curves through farmland. About 20 or so minutes from Mt Gambier, there is one final left hand curve and you can see the ocean across pancake flat land. The thoughts that crossed my mind were, “I must be close, but where are the cliffs that create the chasm that I saw in that photo?”
Soon after the bend, there is a sign telling you to turn right in 400m. This is perplexing because all you can see is farmland – no cliffs, no mountains, barely any undulation in the land. You take the turn, the road becomes dirt and heads towards the ocean you spotted earlier. A left hand bend, and then another sign: Ponds, turn right; Beach straight ahead. You turn right and about 150m later, you come to a cul-de-sac. I parked the car, got out and looked even more confusedly at the one solitary structure – the toilet – and the information board.
I walked to the information board and read it. It wasn’t very long, but it had a map of the site. This was clearly the Piccaninnie Ponds that I had seen in that photo five years earlier. There was a sketch of the chasm and the cathedral under water. It talked about diving and the need for permits. I looked past the information board at the scrub surrounding the cul-de-sac. I figured there must be cliffs beyond that scrub. So I set off on the path. 30m later, I find myself on a pontoon looking out at a vast body of water with not a single bit of land above the ground.
Scratching my head, trying to reconcile my expectations of Piccaninnie Ponds and the reality, I looked down into the water. Not quite crystal clear, but clear enough to see the bottom of the first pond, with grasses and small fish clearly visible. I dipped my hand into the water and it quickly dispelled any thought I had of having a quick swim in the ponds without a wetsuit.
Chance
I went back and read the information on the board. To be able to dive or snorkel Piccaninnie Ponds, I needed a permit from the South Australian Government. To get this permit, I needed to have been trained to the sinkhole standard set by the Cave Divers Association of Australia (CDAA). Since I had never wanted to be a cave diver and didn’t know one, this put a dampener on the whole thing.
Two years later, while diving in
The Course
So in August last year, I made contact with Gary and Linda. We set the date of the course for Easter of 2007. My friend, James Lee, and I would drive down to Mt Gambier where we would do the cavern/sinkhole course and then spend some days diving in the area to make the most of our time there. Of course, one of my first questions was whether we could do the entire course in Piccaninnie Ponds, to which Linda patiently responded, no, the training dives would not be there, but the last dive of the course would be. I had to settle for that.
After a leisurely two day drive later, James and I turned up at
To be honest, we had expected the course to be so much more difficult that it was. But then, James has over 250 dives, including a lot of technical dives under his belt, and I have over 750 dives logged. Having said that, the transition from salt water to fresh water took some getting used to as both James and I had to solve some buoyancy issues. Furthermore, because of the different environment we were diving in where we would not have the depth beneath or above us to allow us to hover head up feet down, we had to re-learn hovering so that we did it horizontally (which is pretty hard without being able to move your weights around).
Other skills like no masks swims, alternate air source use (sometimes combined with no mask swims) and reel work were all pretty straightforward for the two of us (except for the ice-cream headaches we got every time we had to take off the masks). The theory too was not that difficult, although we learned quite a few new things. One of the theory sessions also highlighted the dangers of any form of cave diving. Some of the others had some nervous moments – a couple of the students had panic attacks. Still, they overcame these initial nerves and all eight of us completed the course successfully.
The course involves seven dives. The first four were at a small cavern called Gouldens Waterhole. There is not much to see in the cavern, but it serves as a perfect training ground. Extremely silty with trees (yes, under water) and rock formations that provide perfect tie-off points for reel-work, we spent four dives honing our skills, preparing for the deeper dives.
We had a brief visit to a dry cave called
We then moved on to a sinkhole called One Tree, named for the one tree on the north western “corner” of the sinkhole. At the bottom of the sinkhole rest a wooden harvester and a car. The skill on this dive (apart from no mask swims again) was planning a dive and sticking to it. When we got back uneventfully to the ascent point,
Across the road is another sinkhole called Little Blue. Whilst the school kids leapt off the top of the sinkhole (a good 20m high), we geared up, walked down the stairs and dived a fairly simple dive. We didn’t get to see much as the purpose behind the dive was small tie-offs – making the most of what you can find.
That left us with the final dive remaining. Early the next morning, James and I headed off to Piccaninnie Ponds. We were going to be the first group in the water at 8:00am. The anticipation hung in the air as did the nerves.
At precisely 8:00am (not one minute before), we entered the water. We snorkelled across the first pond, and carefully dodged the reeds that sit on a rock platform between the first pond and the chasm, careful to prevent any algae being kicked off and clouding our view. As we looked down from the surface, we could see 30m straight down, crystal clear. Linda took the other team member down to tie off the reel; James and I followed.
We headed down to the deepest part of the permitted dive at 36.5m (deeper, we would have been breaking the law and entering parts of the sinkhole that people have died in). As we descended, I looked back up. There was James, silhouetted against the brilliant morning sky, walls on either side of him rising from the depths – I was finally in that photo from those first days of my diving career.
We had a look at the dogleg which, then headed up over a ledge into the cathedral – a huge chamber. If it were not for the bubbles, the noise from the regulators and the fact that you were hovering mid-water, you would have been forgiven for thinking you were in a cave on land – the water was that clear. Still, we were very careful not to kick up silt – we could see it resting on the cave ledges.
We spent some time looking around the cathedral and then headed back out above the chasm and towards the first pond. The sunlight was brilliant, streaming into the chasm, playing on the reeds lining the walls of the chasm.
We headed over into the first pond, which is a perfect bowl shape. Grasses cover the bottom and sides of the pond, but you can also see the algae and silt on the bottom. You’ve still got to be careful about kicking up silt. Eels and fish swam around in the pond, oblivious to our presence. We spent a few minutes swimming around and then, just before 9:00am, we are all out of the water. My first words were, “This was worth the nine years’ wait.”
Diving the Sinkholes
Now fully certified cavern/sinkhole divers, James and I were going to make the most of our stay in Mt Gambier. The first goal was to secure permits to redive Piccaninnie Ponds and take photos of it. The second goal was to redive the sinkholes and caverns we had done on the course as we didn’t get to see much of them on the course.
Having done Gouldens and Little Blue, we can say we have done them properly now and don’t need to dive them again! One Tree has potential because, even though there is not much on the bottom, there is certainly a lot of interesting structure on the sinkhole walls. Piccaninnie Ponds, however, is the holy grail of the sinkholes we dived. We did two more dives on the ponds and were awestruck by its beauty.
There are a number of sinkholes that we didn’t get to dive for various reasons including restricted access and CDAA requirements for experience. Two of these sinkholes, Kilsby’s and the Shaft, were often spoken about by other cave divers we met in Mt Gambier. These will undoubtedly lure James and me back.
As a final dive in Mt Gambier, we dived in Ewens Ponds. A series of three craters, connected by shallow channels, the ponds are very shallow and do not involve any overhead environments. Thus, any open water diver is allowed to dive the ponds. The ponds serve as proof of the effect of farming (particularly chemical use) on marine life. The centre of the craters, once filled with life, are barren wastelands, with nothing growing in them. The two channels, on the other hand, were stunning. Only 2m deep, the channels are filled with reeds and grasses, forming perfect hideouts for little fish. The sunlight playing on the reeds were the perfect backdrop to a leisurely cruise through our last dive in Mt Gambier.
Obvious Caution
Like all diving in overhead environments (such as wrecks), all forms of cave diving have risks. After all, we are talking about a dive site that is created by the collapsing of tonnes of rock and soil by the action of slightly acidic water. There is nothing that guarantees the rock is any more stable now than it was at the time of the last collapse. There is no doubt - cave diving is dangerous and not for everyone.
Hunting Dragons
From Mt Gambier, we headed 400kms west towards
Magical, not mythical, the leafies are stunning creatures and well worth the visit. Extremely difficult to photograph head on – they are like lionfish – they know when a photographer is around and all you get is the back and sides!
The disused jetty, which is slowly rotting away, provides a beautiful home and sanctuary for more than just the leafies. Cuttlefish, eagle rays, sponges and soft corals, nudibranchs, weeds, grasses and a whole range of other marine life nestle amongst the pulons holding up the jetty. We even found a juvenile weedy sea dragon (probably on holidays from
Having got our fill of leafies with two dives longer than an hour and a half, we started our way home. The stunning leafies and the brilliant Piccaninnie Ponds were truly worth the 9 year wait.
