Introduction

This cave system runs right under the main streets of Maunt Gambier (South Australia). Just a few meters from the preferred Soggy Wombats’ borrow (The Habitat 99), the team has stacked many hours in Engelbrecht Cave System.

On the east side, a ‘short’ dive until you hit the first dry chamber guarantees a safe environment for building up confident divers. The west side of the system is restricted to Advanced Cave Divers (under the CDAA regulations), which means only experienced divers are allowed to have access to the dive. A more complex dive from the start, and a more rewarding experience underwater with two larger/longer underwater sections connected by a tricky to negotiate rockpile, Engelbrecht West is probably the dive most divers look for most in the Engelbrecht Cave System. As access to West is granted after considerable hours of training and skill development, East ends up being a frequent destination for divers during their early days of cave diving development.

During those skill developments hours, some of the Wombats (Josh and Matt A.) ended up unveiling a massive new section in the end of the second dry chamber on Engelbrecht East. A 200+ meters of virgin underwater cave that was named the Engelbrecht East Extension (EEx).

Exploration

Grubby, Sleepy and Chatty have done all the hard work here. From caring cylinders up and down to sliding on their butts on the tricky slopes to get to the Pool of Tears. You can find the full post article in our blog (How the Wombats became Soggy).

The next step of the exploration project is to complete photogrammetry scans for both East and West dry chambers and underwater section. This will enable the team to perform a thourough and broad analysis of potential leads and areas for furtther exploration. The model will be the base for a new map of the system which will be freely available so all cave diving community can benefit from it imporving safety for anyone interested in dive the system. Not only reference for dive planning, an accurate model and map can be highly valuabe for training and diving awareness purposes.

In partnership with the CDAA and the Council, the Soggy Wombats were granted a flying permit to gather drone imagery for this project. This is a fundamental piece of the puzzle as the intent is to produce the most accurate possible model and map of the system in relation to the surface features. We want to include the larger local community in this project as we see it as a benefit for the city that so lovely and kindly receive us cave divers year round for our adventures.

Partial videos of the scans in Engelbrecht West and Engelbrecht East have been already published via socila media. You can find them below.