Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
Alan wrote:
Greg wrote:
> ... I just had the pleasure of
> doing the first IANTD Sump Diver course, run by Rob Palmer at Jenolan
> in New South Wales.
I'd be interested in hearing more about the course if you'd like to
expand on it. I'd be particularly interested in knowing what the pre-
requisites were for taking it. We have long had problems getting sump
training from the CDG in the UK. They insist on a large amount of dry
caving experience before they will even talk to you. When I last talked
to them they did not recognise any of the Florida type training as
relevant for this country (UK).
I probably should give some background to this bit of mail for those
not familiar with cave diving in Australia. First, like the rest of the
world, cave diving in Australia is tangled in a web of speleo-politics.
Cave diving in South Australia (centred at Mount Gambier) and on the
Nullarbor is mainly "controlled" by the CDAA (Cave Divers Association
of Australia) and is mainly diver oriented. The cave diving in New South
Wales and Tasmania is "controlled" by the Australian Speleological Federation
(ASF) and its associated speleo clubs and is mainly caver oriented.
I use the word "controlled" where groups have done most of the work in
negotiating access to sites and have their own procedures in place for
permits, etc.
There are other cave diving regions, but the more remote they are from
Mount Gambier, the less pervasive is the CDAA influence, and the more likely
they are to be the province of local groups.
The CDAA training structure currently is close the NACD structure as best
as I can tell. They have the following categories - Cavern Diver (basic
overhead environment with access to the surface and daylight and a depth
limit of 20m), Sinkhole Diver (like Cavern but to a depth of 40m), Cave Diver
(depth limit of 20m, no direct access to surface/daylight, maximum penetration
of 20/40??m), Penetration Diver (like cave diver but for longer penetrations).
To get CDAA qualifications you really need to travel to Mount Gambier to
have access to appropriate sites (although some sinkhole courses are
run in New South Wales and some Cave Diving courses are run as Nullarbor
expeditions).
Cave diving sites in New South Wales mostly require a significant
amount of dry caving to get access (unless you get access from the
tourist caves). For this reason there have been very few cave divers
in NSW, and there has been no formal training regime. Instead a few
experienced cave divers (with CDG and CDAA backgrounds) gradually built
up a small group of divers on an informal basis.
My introduction to cave diving was on this informal basis, and after
some years of cave diving in NSW I took a crossover exam to get CDAA
Cave qualifications. There were still some NSW cave divers with no
formal cave diving training or qualification, so to remedy this I got
together with a couple of people from my caving group (SUSS - Sydney
Uni Speleo Society) to bring Rob Palmer out from the UK to run a course.
We negotiated access to dive sites in Jenolan Caves (a first from
a training point of view) and ran a 6 day full time course at Jenolan,
taught by Rob Palmer and Ron Allum (one of Australia's leading cave
divers). Rob wanted to certify people under IANTD, but the existing
IANTD Cave Diver certification was developed under Florida style conditions
and was inappropriate for NSW sites, which are primarily sumps. There
was no way anyone was going to get 400 minutes underwater in sumps at
Jenolan.
The course participants all agreed to do the course regardless of any
formal qualification, just to get the experience of a course from Rob and
Ron. But fortunately Rob decided to use this opportunity to introduce
a Sump Diver strand to the IANTD structure. This now follows on from
the IANTD Overhead Environment qualification as an alternative to
the pre-existing Cave Diver qualification. There will probably be
crossovers between the two forks developed later.
As for the course itself, one of the requirements of the ASF and the
Jenolan management was that the course highlight caving skills as well
as diving skills and reinforce a cave conservation ethic.
The course ran full time for 6 days - with half a day's lectures and
half a day's practical sessions each day. There were several sessions
for all involved in the Jenolan hydro weir to develop guideline skills,
and try out different gear configurations. About half of the people
on the course of twelve had mainly diving backgrounds, the other half
mainly caving backgrounds, with all but a couple having previous
cave diving experience. There were five sump dives on the course
for most people (not counting 4 breath hold sump dives) - and a caving
trip (about 5 hours duration) for some. One of the dives included
rigging ladders and belays for access to the site. Everyone got to dive
the sumps with various gear configurations (back mounted with wings,
side mounts, stage mounts)The theory covered the IANTD Overhead Environment
stuff and drew from the Cave Diver course, but the emphasis was on sump
oriented diving.
This emphasis dealt with minimum redundancy, solo diving, gear transportation,
dry caving, and cave conservation.
By the end of the course everyone had passed the written exam and the
in water assessments, and Rob and Ron awarded either and Overhead
Environment or a Sump Diver certification dependent on the person's
previous caving and cave diving experience. I think the final
requirements for Sump Diver (it's still up in the air - we only
did this a week ago and put Rob back on the plane to the UK on Sunday
night) will be 100 hours dry caving experience and 40 sump dives
with provisions to count other cave diving experience towards this
number.
The course was great, and enjoyed by all, and everyone was happy with
their certification level, as they have the ability to upgrade to
Sump Diver once they gain the requisite experience.
The 100 hours dry caving requirement is not too hard to gain in
NSW - you'd only have to go away on half a dozen SUSS trips to rack
this up. And given the nature of sump diving in NSW (short sumps,
usually shallow) the diving requirement is not too unreasonable.
Rob mentioned the difficulty that some people in the UK have in
getting CDG training, for the reasons Alan outlines. I don't think
he was intending to take the CDG on with this IANTD alternative
straight away. Rather he saw it initially as an alternative for
those that wanted a qualification from an international organisation.
I expect, though, that he might make it available in the UK eventually.
Greg Ryan gregr@cs*.su*.oz*.au*
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]