This part of the website is dedicated to cave diving and dry caving. I commenced cave diving in 1986 with my CDAA Cat I/II courses but didn't really get back into it until fairly recently once marriage, exams and offspring were all under control! Over the last few years I had been getting down to Mt Gambier in the south east of South Australia at every possible opportunity. Then I found myself in Vanuatu for 2 years where cave exploration was in its infancy, and never visited features were plentiful!
The caves of Vanuatu are just starting to be documented. The massive limestone section of eastern Espiritu Santo has had several visits by Australian cave diving expeditions, and a world class system has been partially surveyed. Sadly due to a breakdown in landowner relations, the area is closed to diving at present. However many thousands of caves exist on other islands including the island of Efate, and the caves listed here are just a small sample.
In the absence of any known cave numbering system here, I developed my own system based on the ASF Cave and Karst Numbering Code (see http://www.caves.org.au ). This has now been ratified by the UIS (http://rubens.its.unimelb.edu.au/~pgm/uis/). All my findings have been archived with the ASF and CEGSA.
In 2005 and again in 2006, a large French scientific biodiversity study will be occuring on Espiritu Santo which includes a karst module. The French cavers (Bernard and Josiane Lips, and cave diver Franck Brehier) have explored at least 35 more karst features on the island (aside from the ones I already knew of). So the possiblities for cave exploration in this area seem significant.
The section on Mt Gambier in South Australia, contains text from The Lower South East Cave Reference Book by Peter Horne ISBN 0 9594383 9 4. I am very grateful to Peter for his generosity in allowing me to reproduce sections of his invaluable work, to support my images in this section. In this way, I am hoping to slowly build up my own illustrated version of his catalogue of cave features.
Such sections of text are marked - *P Horne LSECR
I hope you enjoy this part of my website!
