Dive Rite Ambassador Liz Rogers and her team are beginning their 2018 Cocklebiddy Cave Expedition in Australia’s Nullarbor Plain. Here’s a quick look at their plan and goals for the expedition. We can’t wait to see the results.
A month of preparation, packing, and lists of lists of things to remember; and we are finally on the road across the country. Two weeks in the Australian desert, just the three of us, the local kangaroos, a lot of dive gear and a really big hole in the ground. Preparation is key – if we’ve left something important behind, it’s staying there. If the gear we’ve got with us breaks down, the only fix available is what we can achieve with electrical tape and o-ring grease.
We’re headed to Cocklebiddy Cave. The dive from the entrance lake to the first rock pile is 3000 feet underwater. After carrying all the gear up and over the dry collapse, the dive to the second rockpile is closer to 8000 feet. In 1983 my Dad was the first person on earth to surface in that second air chamber. The team named the chamber Toad Hall. This trip we plan to spend three days camping in there while we do repeated dives in the third sump to inspect the known end.
My motivation is simple – lots of great pictures. Cocklebiddy is a beautiful cave and most of the photos from the second and third sumps are partly lit hero shots of people covered in lots of tanks. A day trip to the end requires several days to set up and if the diver wants to be done in 18 hours or less there’s no time for arty photos. By camping in Toad we get time to mess around, find the beauty spots, and showcase them.
Steve and Ryan are optimistic that more time down the back end of Cocklebiddy will pay dividends in fresh cave. The massive borehole tunnel gets progressively smaller until it pinches right down at the current end, 7000 feet from Toad. As a result the boys are both using sidemount rebreathers. We are optimistically taking a small pair of steels just in case the breather doesn’t fit. Being able to swap from OC to CCR on the Nomad LS without having to take an additional harness is helping us keep the load down.
That said, my big red Classic wing from my OC steel doubles back in the day is making an appearance as a buoyancy chamber for the home made sled with all the bailout tanks. The sled will be towed behind the scooter for the slog to Toad with both bailout and dry tubes of camping gear to hopefully
For the long scooter runs we will be using helmet mounted LX20s and scooter mounted HP50 video lights. Once we get into the interesting photography and exploration diving, the lights move to being hand mounted for better communication. The mounting system, the compact canister-free setup, and being able to transfer a primary light easily underwater are major advantages of the Dive Rite lighting system for this trip. Using standard batteries that we can swap out while camping in cave after a great burn time doesn’t hurt either.
It’s going to take us three days of loading into the lake, prepping gear and a setup dive before we head underground for the scooter to Toad Hall and three nights underground. If all goes to plan we’ll be coming out with empty reels and a full memory card. Stay tuned.
