Sas
Contributor
Hey, new thread is a bit late! Anyway, I wrote up a trip report for my trip to Mt Gambier last weekend so here it is 
Left early from work on Friday to head up to Mt Gambier for my first post-course cavern diving. There are two ways to get there so me and my buddy each went one different way to see which was faster as we'd gotten all sorts of different advice from people. Ballarat is definitely the fastest so glad I picked that way I went the other way on the way back though, but it took longer even though the traffic was less and I had one less break.
We planned for the first day to do two dives at Kilsby Cave, our favourite dive from the course. We followed the GPS there and ended up on a track clearly not designed for anything other than fourwheel drives, which was quite traumatic for my car, but luckily made it there with 4 minutes to spare after driving up and down a road for a while to try to find the right gate! The diving there was amazing, and it was so relaxing not to have to worry about things such as having my mask stolen or surprise OOA drills. Also as there was only two of us I didn't have to worry about watching out for a team of four like on the course. We did two hour long dives, max depth of 30m but we stayed shallow and out of the cave bit for most of it as the sunlight coming into the opening was beautiful. We found a few swimthroughs, which were fun to go through. The second dive was even more fun, and I hung out doing my stops in the light, couldn't see anything as it was too bright but it was like being in space!
Cave opening glowing
Buddy on a stop acting like a water dragon
Buddy inside the cave part
We went to the pub nearby to try to get some food after this but the bartender said 'this is the country luv, we don't serve food all day like your fancy city pubs!' So we played some pool and then got some tea back at the dive lodge and got ready for a night dive at Ewens Ponds. I found them overrated to be honest and I definitely don't think worth driving all that way just to dive them so I am glad I didn't go on past trips. Apparently they used to be a lot better but are overdived now? It was fun to be in such clear water and to see the stars under the water though. My buddy is an avid freediver so he freedived whilst I did a dive. Saw lots of creepy eels, yabbies and fish. At one point I wanted to see how deep the silt was so stuck my hand under only to see a giant eel emerge, scared the crap out of me!
Yabbie
Long exposure shot (30s) of Ewens Ponds as it was nearly dark
Creepy eel
After the dive we headed back to the lodge as per the GPS and got horribly horribly lost. It was getting pretty close to midnight and we had to be up at 6am the next day for diving so was a fairly frustrating experience. In the end we ended up in the pitch black in the middle of the bush with long grass all around us and no way to turn around. In the end my buddy got out and stamped all the long grass down so I could turn around but yea, again my car got a good scrubbing on the underside trying to get out of there! Think if I keep up this diving I'm going to have to invest in a more robust car. Also we'd been talking about horror movies before hand so I was expecting at any moment for mutant rednecks to jump out of the grass and kidnap us. We got home very late and the next day it was quite painful to get out of bed but we had to be in the water at a new site, Piccanninie Ponds, by 8am as we booked that time slot. I'm glad we started early though as we were the only ones in the park.
This dive was probably my absolute favourite so far up in Mt Gambier. We jumped in the water to see a fairly boring looking pond and I was thinking 'where is the cave???' I knew it had to be somewhere as I had pictures/instructions from friends. I saw a kind of weedy area so swum over to it and unexpectedly emerged to 'The Chasm' which is a 65m+ deep (not sure how far they've mapped it yet) chasm, crystal clear visibility and amazing plantlife! We were awestruck for a bit and just hung out for a bit looking. We made our way through the Chasm into 'The Cathedral' which is a small cave type area with lovely limestone structures - it's quite dark apart from a few small openings that had light streaming through. We did a fairly shallow dive of 28m. On the way back the water was less clear with floating algae but it was still lovely. This was definitely my favourite site so far and I'm regretting buying an individual dive permit rather than an annual one now as we want to dive this next time too! I took a bunch of pictures but it does the place no justice at all.
Big tall weeds that open up into the Chasm
Taken from about 25m, really nice viz, can see for miles!
Inside the Cathedral
Me inside Cathedral
After some lunch, and another getting lost experience with our GPS (I think out of the 1400km~ I did on this trip in the two days, about 100km of those were getting lost from our GPSs telling us to go down non-existant roads, I'm really glad our instructor showed us how to get to some sites as they are really hard to recognise from the road), we went back to one of the sites we did on our course called Little Blue. We wanted to dive another site called One Tree but we didn't bring ropes to get in and also I think it was a fire ban day and diving isn't allowed there on fire ban days. This site has quite bad visibility and the ground is full of rubbish that the locals have chucked in (it's right near a road), but that is actually interesting rather than annoying. After some odd looks of bystanders at us gearing up (it was 33C and the water was 12C at depth so we were in thick thermals and our drysuits, looking like we were going to pass out), we jumped in for a dive. I was too hot to get down to the water in my full thermals so had downgraded them slightly and started regretting this on the bottom! But it was a nice dive and we found lots of old street signs to tie off onto and we found the car at the bottom too. There was a thermocline at 10m where it was 24C! So our stops were lovely and warm. This site will be fun to explore (we've only done a fraction) in future though I think it will be better in winter when the algae dies and also we are not mauled by flies the whole time on the surface.
Old rubbish to tie off onto
Chilling out after our dives
Anyway, going to take another trip up in March as my buddy wants to do his Cave course in April before he goes back to Mexico so needs some more practice. Also Michael will certified then too
Left early from work on Friday to head up to Mt Gambier for my first post-course cavern diving. There are two ways to get there so me and my buddy each went one different way to see which was faster as we'd gotten all sorts of different advice from people. Ballarat is definitely the fastest so glad I picked that way
I went the other way on the way back though, but it took longer even though the traffic was less and I had one less break. We planned for the first day to do two dives at Kilsby Cave, our favourite dive from the course. We followed the GPS there and ended up on a track clearly not designed for anything other than fourwheel drives, which was quite traumatic for my car, but luckily made it there with 4 minutes to spare after driving up and down a road for a while to try to find the right gate! The diving there was amazing, and it was so relaxing not to have to worry about things such as having my mask stolen or surprise OOA drills. Also as there was only two of us I didn't have to worry about watching out for a team of four like on the course. We did two hour long dives, max depth of 30m but we stayed shallow and out of the cave bit for most of it as the sunlight coming into the opening was beautiful. We found a few swimthroughs, which were fun to go through. The second dive was even more fun, and I hung out doing my stops in the light, couldn't see anything as it was too bright but it was like being in space!
Cave opening glowing
Buddy on a stop acting like a water dragon
Buddy inside the cave part
We went to the pub nearby to try to get some food after this but the bartender said 'this is the country luv, we don't serve food all day like your fancy city pubs!' So we played some pool and then got some tea back at the dive lodge and got ready for a night dive at Ewens Ponds. I found them overrated to be honest and I definitely don't think worth driving all that way just to dive them so I am glad I didn't go on past trips. Apparently they used to be a lot better but are overdived now? It was fun to be in such clear water and to see the stars under the water though. My buddy is an avid freediver so he freedived whilst I did a dive. Saw lots of creepy eels, yabbies and fish. At one point I wanted to see how deep the silt was so stuck my hand under only to see a giant eel emerge, scared the crap out of me!
Yabbie
Long exposure shot (30s) of Ewens Ponds as it was nearly dark
Creepy eel
After the dive we headed back to the lodge as per the GPS and got horribly horribly lost. It was getting pretty close to midnight and we had to be up at 6am the next day for diving so was a fairly frustrating experience. In the end we ended up in the pitch black in the middle of the bush with long grass all around us and no way to turn around. In the end my buddy got out and stamped all the long grass down so I could turn around but yea, again my car got a good scrubbing on the underside trying to get out of there! Think if I keep up this diving I'm going to have to invest in a more robust car. Also we'd been talking about horror movies before hand so I was expecting at any moment for mutant rednecks to jump out of the grass and kidnap us. We got home very late and the next day it was quite painful to get out of bed but we had to be in the water at a new site, Piccanninie Ponds, by 8am as we booked that time slot. I'm glad we started early though as we were the only ones in the park.
This dive was probably my absolute favourite so far up in Mt Gambier. We jumped in the water to see a fairly boring looking pond and I was thinking 'where is the cave???' I knew it had to be somewhere as I had pictures/instructions from friends. I saw a kind of weedy area so swum over to it and unexpectedly emerged to 'The Chasm' which is a 65m+ deep (not sure how far they've mapped it yet) chasm, crystal clear visibility and amazing plantlife! We were awestruck for a bit and just hung out for a bit looking. We made our way through the Chasm into 'The Cathedral' which is a small cave type area with lovely limestone structures - it's quite dark apart from a few small openings that had light streaming through. We did a fairly shallow dive of 28m. On the way back the water was less clear with floating algae but it was still lovely. This was definitely my favourite site so far and I'm regretting buying an individual dive permit rather than an annual one now as we want to dive this next time too! I took a bunch of pictures but it does the place no justice at all.
Big tall weeds that open up into the Chasm
Taken from about 25m, really nice viz, can see for miles!
Inside the Cathedral
Me inside Cathedral
After some lunch, and another getting lost experience with our GPS (I think out of the 1400km~ I did on this trip in the two days, about 100km of those were getting lost from our GPSs telling us to go down non-existant roads
, I'm really glad our instructor showed us how to get to some sites as they are really hard to recognise from the road), we went back to one of the sites we did on our course called Little Blue. We wanted to dive another site called One Tree but we didn't bring ropes to get in and also I think it was a fire ban day and diving isn't allowed there on fire ban days. This site has quite bad visibility and the ground is full of rubbish that the locals have chucked in (it's right near a road), but that is actually interesting rather than annoying. After some odd looks of bystanders at us gearing up (it was 33C and the water was 12C at depth so we were in thick thermals and our drysuits, looking like we were going to pass out), we jumped in for a dive. I was too hot to get down to the water in my full thermals so had downgraded them slightly and started regretting this on the bottom! But it was a nice dive and we found lots of old street signs to tie off onto and we found the car at the bottom too. There was a thermocline at 10m where it was 24C! So our stops were lovely and warm. This site will be fun to explore (we've only done a fraction) in future though I think it will be better in winter when the algae dies and also we are not mauled by flies the whole time on the surface.Old rubbish to tie off onto
Chilling out after our dives
Anyway, going to take another trip up in March as my buddy wants to do his Cave course in April before he goes back to Mexico so needs some more practice. Also Michael will certified then too
gave it a go. 
