My anxiety just wont let me do another trip!

EASTERN KIMBERLEYS – 17 June – 12 July
Another trip to do some cave surveying, probably my last trip, but more of that later.  I feel really honoured that am able to do these trips, I really enjoy the surveying and finding the new caves. I flew to Alice Springs, was picked up by David W-C and then over the next three days we headed for the Kimberleys.

We met up with the rest of the group and then headed out to our campsite.  This year, some of the area’s Traditional Owners (TOs) came out to our campsite and did a “Welcome to Country Ceremony”.  One of the Aunties (they were all Freshwater People) took us down to the creek we camp by and did the ceremony which would make sure that the Freshwater People ancestors would welcome us to the area.  They did say that some of the local TOs had seen a 4m saltwater crocodile in our lagoon, and it would be best if we didn’t swim in it.  Wow, I certainly wouldn’t be swimming in the water hole!

The water hole. I held off for about a week, letting everyone else go into the lagoon and get taken if there was a saltwater crocodile in it, but by week three I figured the crocodile had moved on (LOL).

David W-C brought a tent up from Tasmania for me (my tent wouldn’t fit in my suitcase for the flight) … Big Thanks David!  I set up the tent with a large piece of Tyvek wrap at the front door so that I could see any snakes that visited me at night.

It was really interesting, we often saw cattle around the salt licks, but at the end of the three weeks, we would see big, big groups of cattle, looked like a 1000 of them in some spots, in other years we didn’t see them in big groups such as this.

Weather … we were blessed with the weather, during the day it was around 30 – 35ºC and when the sun went down (around 5.30pm), the temperature dropped by morning the temp was around 13ºC when we would get up – around 5.30am.  Thankfully, this year I took a winter sleeping bag and thermals to sleep in so I was quite warm when the sun went down.

Finding the caves … We identify areas where we believe there will be caves.  The terrain can be challenging, particularly areas where the vegetation hasn’t been burned (hazard reduction).  However, this year we found an area that had been burned recently, possibly the week before we arrived.  And so, it was like a walk in the park, so easy!  Pity that there weren’t that many big caves in the area!

The area that had been recently burned, so easy to walk from the road to the karst.

Getting in and out of the caves … this year as Brian would be with us, we would have the opportunity of checking out some vertical caves, so I took my SRT gear along.

This is the first vertical cave for the trip, that’s Brian setting it up – I was the third person down and unfortunately the rigging was in a spot that was very awkward, I managed it, but it was touch and go for a bit, was very pleased to get to the bottom of the pitch!

This is one cave that we found, that had a big chain at the top, looked like it was quite old (but safe), Brian down climbed on the chain but it was dodgy so a few days later we put some bolts in the rock and rigged a good safe rope. It was probably a 25m pitch.

The same pitch, now with a good wire trace and that’s Brian drilling the hole for a bolt. After we exited the cave, we would remove the bolt.

And there’s me abseiling down, the old chain is off to my left. After surveying the cave, I’d have to SRT up the rope.

And sometimes we had to downclimb with the use of a handline. Here’s Rob helping Melaniedown.

Then at other times, we just had to climb up.

Here’s Brian ready to descend down a slot. I followed him only to find that it was just a hole and once I got to the bottom, did a bit of surveying, then I had to get back to the top. By now, it’s just me and Brian doing the vertical caves.

And the final vertical cave, again Brian had to put a bolt into one of the rocks.

Formations – We didn’t find a massive cave on this trip, and the caves weren’t as decorated as we were used to finding, however, there were some very nice formations.

I just loved this section of flowstone, just imagine how lovely it would look with water flowing over it (during the wet season).

Really interesting formations, like bulbs.

Shawls (about 1.5m long).

This was really cool, some stals that had formed when there was red “dust” maybe flowing down and then new formations with no dust in the water.

Again, formations with the red dust and right beside it, absolutely white formation.

Formations in a steamway passage (see the river rocks on the ground).

a big slab of calcite on the ground.

This is my favourite, it’s about 1/2 to 3/4 of a metre.

This is a large chamber, probably around 10m across and 15m in the other direction. This was a big find.

The same chamber, but with different lighting.

Another nice formation, the floor is a stream passage.

Another large formation, about 1m high with another calcite floor.

Lovely shawls.

Surveying … We were there for almost 3 weeks and probably had a day here or there off, but most of the time, we were out exploring or surveying.  All up we surveyed 30 caves (I think around 20 of these were caves that we found on this trip).  A total of 2,748m of passageways surveyed.   I spent most of my time on the Disto, with Bob doing the drawing and the others exploring for passageways.

Interesting stuff found … So many interesting things … I came across Oncolites (they look like Stromatolites) in some rocks – very exciting discovery.  We also found a lot of Crinoid  fossils, the fossils are quite small, between 1.5 and 2cm.  In one of the caves we found Calcite crystals which are often found in the limestone, but this time we also found some lovely square ones that had fallen from the roof, around 4cm x 4cm and you could shine your light through them.

Whilst 3 weeks was a long time, the last week passed very quickly.  Last year, I think I said to Bob, “ah well, probably won’t be back” but then for some reason I must have forgotten that it was my last trips, and signed up for this one.  But, this was definitely my last trip.  I guess I just couldn’t overcome my anxiety about the snakes.

We set up the latrine about 100m from the campsite, but I had to walk on a 10cm track through the grass, and I was constantly on high alert for snakes.  I know, I’ve been bushwalking for over 25 years, but that 100m walk just put me over the edge.  This trip I didn’t see any snakes whilst we were caving (unlike other years), and we didn’t have any slithering through our campsite, but, on one of our trips, I came across a shed-skin and I swear it was 100mm (10cm) in diametre and where the snake had exited the skin, it was still laying upright on the ground (read … it had only recently shed the skin so it was hanging around somewhere) – a snake with that diametre skin would have been huge – probably 4 – 5m long!

It has helped that this year we didn’t find any “amazing” caves and nothing really big, so I’m not feeling any FOMO about everyone going back and finding stunning caves.

Well, apart from this chamber. I think we found this on the second last), it was absolutely stunning, you had to do a small crawl (about 10cm high), and you came across this stunning chamber.  Bob K took this lovely wide screen photo of me so that I can look back fondly on my time with the group.  Thank you so much Bob for the image, and thank you for running these trips since 2007, you are a legend.  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥