Day 1
Monday morning I sat in a café in Redfern, waiting for Aidan, Issy and Dion to arrive. Little did I know how exciting the next 48 hours would be. We drove down to Bungonia, arriving at 11am, immediately signing ourselves in for B35 Hollands Hole. We actually thought the name of the cave we were about to do was “Dead Man’s”, which truly is more appropriate.
We suited up, packed our pockets with the essentials, and walked down to the entrance. To our surprise, we happened to be in Bungonia at the same time as an adventure race, so we were faced with a bunch of relatively clean people in lycra emerging from the cave. Some of the race marshals were at the entrance and we asked about an orange helmet we had left in the caves 3 weeks before. They claimed they had been through the whole cave and seen no helmet. Seeing as they looked like hardened cave experts, our hopes were crushed.
Regardless, we scrambled down wriggling through the mud. This time Aidan brought the trusty trowel for some digging. By the time we got to the first proper squeeze, the hip hugger (which we couldn’t pass last time), it appeared that no one had been down since. The squeeze is oval shaped on a tilt up to the left, about 30cm high and 40cm wide continuing on for about 5m. It took a whole 5 minutes of Aidan looking like a buried dead man until he finally broke through to the “cavern” on the other side. Mission accomplished! Helmet retrieved!
Next was Issy and then myself. Issy and Aidan went ahead so there would be space for Dion in our new “cavern”. As our trusty mole Aidan dug out squeeze 2, I sat with Dion reminding him that he better not get stuck as he would be blocking the entrance for the rest of us to get out. So in response, Dion got stuck... After a sweaty 15 minutes of wriggling Dion freed himself and returned towards the surface.
I headed off to find Issy and Aidan who had breezed through the second squeeze and had consumed all the chocolate, not saving any for their fellow comrades. Note: Flakes do not survive caves. Here the air was too bad to continue through the 3rd squeeze, so we grudgingly headed back to a miserable Dion.
That warm sunny afternoon, with some spare time and helmets, we set off to do Argyle hole. We were super psyched, filled a bag and headed into the cave. Issy being our trusty navigation source, led Aidan and I to a long mysterious squeeze, which ended in a 14m drop. Realising that we forgot the second rope, Issy and Dion headed up to the surface and I set up the most beautiful anchor point ever seen to UNSWOC. As I finish this lovely SRENE anchor I hear Issy shouting into our squeeze: "THE CAVE IS FLOODING!!". Haha nice joke Issy, but in poor taste, how did you even have time to get to the surface and back? Were my thoughts. A few seconds later Aidan and I heard the running water and packed up faster than a boulderer refuses an offer to go trad climbing.
What had happened, is as Dion and Issy left to get more rope, they met a tongue of water entering the cave. Issy followed the water back down into the cave to alert us then headed back up to Dion. As Aidan and I scrambled up, we were confronted with pretty underground waterfalls. With no time for admiration of the beautiful water works, we all headed through the flattener (23cm) together. The icy water saturating our cotton cave suits. Finally just before the surface we found hail, and Bungonia was transformed to a winter wonderland!
Day 2
You know it is going to be a good day when you start the morning with a breakfast BBQ. Our cotton cave suits were barbecued dry to a literal crisp, then patched up again. Once our empty stomachs were turned by the dirty BBQ smell which we were to wear in confined spaces all day, we headed out to blowfly cave. I shall skip over blowfly as it was relatively uneventful, you can see all the excitement in Aidan's video.
After blowfly we headed back to our nemesis of Monday, Argyle hole. Armed with 120m of rope, plenty of toothpaste biscuits, and BBQ scented cave suits, we reached a depth of 120m, still 13m short from the bottom, sub-optimal...
We wandered around just above both sumps really wishing we had just that tiny bit more rope, and contemplating our free solo skills. This had all only taken maybe an hour or two at most, there was heaps of time before we had to be at the surface right? We misjudged the time it would take the 4 of us to ascend the 120m and scramble up to the surface.
As we had linked many of the abseils together to get the most out of our ropes, the ropes passed over flat ledges where the ascenders would get stuck as we passed them down to the next person. A solid 4-5 hours later we FINALLY were out. Exhausted we convinced our escape driver show off his skills and drive us to a variety of south coast stations in order to make the last train.
Day 2.5
Aidan dropped us at Dapto station with a whole 20mins to spare, 10mins later we were happily on the last train and settled down for the long ride. Slight issue here… the math doesn’t add up. As I was drifting to sleep I heard an announcement suggesting we were heading to Nowra, shit! We quickly discussed what to do, and upon advice from an eccentric drunk local we hopped off at Bombo.
After sussing out the cemetery and the beach we decided the beach was a better place to sleep, so with some stealth we approached the beach and settled down for a solid 2 hours sleep. Following a struggle to wake up Dion (no club member left behind!) we made it back to the station for the first train back to Sydney, just in time for sunrise.
*Notes:
- Photo Credit goes to Issy
- We have no affiliation with the SES, and simply happened to stumble across the overalls pictured.