Sinkhole diving was an unexpected find for us. While doing a house sit in Adelaide we were chatting with the home owner and he mentioned that he had grown up in the Mount Gambier region and had explored sinkholes when he was younger. He told us of some of the sites and lo and behold, there was diving to be had. As we were planning a little road trip between house sits in the region, we added Mount Gambier to our list.
Checking on line we found the goto shop for diving in the Mount Gambier area is Reef 2 Ridge, located in Mount Gambier. We stopped by the day before our dive and got fitted out in our diving gear. Super helpful staff and excellent equipment. As well I must give full credit. When asked what we could expect to see we were told, “wet rocks”, they delivered in spades.One of the unique things about sinkhole diving is you don’t always see the dive site coming. Access to the dive sites is restricted, as many of them are on private property. The Kilsby Sinkhole is great because it allows divers who are not Cave certified or Technical Divers to get a glimpse of this unique and specialized side of SCUBA diving.To give you an idea of what a sinkhole looks like, you can see the layout of Kilsby on this map. As we do not have any cave diving or technical diving training our dive would be restricted to the yellow portion of the map. There were a couple of other divers in the hole at the same time who disappeared into the dark underground red portions.From the viewing platform you get an idea of the entrance to the water in the sinkhole. The dive platform is accessed from a ramp (see the video at the end of this post)Karen sporting a wing type BCD. For us this was a new piece of equipment. After using it I certainly see why divers are fans of this style of BCD.I suppose if one was claustrophobic this type of diving could be a serious problem. Even though we always had open water above us there certainly is an awareness of being enclosed. I quite liked it and found the dark corners of the cave somewhat enticing. We will have to see what develops from that.
This type of diving definitely isn’t like exploring coral reefs and watching fish, however it does have it’s attractions. Despite the total lack of fish and absolute minimum of plant life it is intriguing. Unfortunately it is also very equipment intensive, however I also understand the attraction of that. If you are looking to explore all avenues of diving you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t try cave/sinkhole/cenote diving.
Have a look at our short video to get another perspective. Enjoy, and thanks for reading.
