A campfire yarn
The following is a story. The story that Lloyd Robinson told at a campfire at Bendethera during Easter 1996.
The various participants have contributed to this story. The names, dates and occurrences were altered a little before
going to press by the story teller because the rest of us had been enjoying the amber and red coloured fluids a
bit too much when he was telling the story! Sorry Lloyd!
The
story begins in a far off time when many of us were.....? Well we just were!
...... in re-discovering Bendethera, Lloyd used a Shell road map when he began exploring in the early 1950's and on the map was marked Wyanbene, the Big Hole and Bendethera. Lloyd drove a motorbike to the Big Hole with Russell Badans and searched the area and found the Big Hole. They made extra lengths of steel wire rope with soldered crimps and climbed to the bottom. The original lengths of ladder are still hanging in the Jewel cave in WA but he would not use it now.
A Mr Greig of the property named Khan Yunis, a few kilometres south of the Wyanbene caves area helped Lloyd in the first attempt to find Bendethera but with little success. Later Lloyd purchased and rebuilt the old faithful Landrover and it would go just about anywhere, unlike the Buicks of Roy Simms. One time the Buick got bogged and they had to walk back to Khan Yunis.
Later Jim Gould got to know the Davis family, of "Woola" and they knew how to get to the Bendethera homestead via the Deua Valley. So they came in by packhorse. Later they formed the forerunner of today's ISS, the Wollongong Speleological and Expeditionary Society.
On this packhorse event, that cost £40 (forty pounds in the old currency system for the younger members), Lloyd had a plate camera with an electronic flash that weighed 14lb (approximately 6.4 kg). The first day they trekked to "Alpine homestead", the next day into the vacant Bendethera homestead. The owner, Rankin who was in his 90's lived in Moruya. Unfortunately the horses could not walk through the thickets going to the cave so they had to hike up. Lloyd was sick with the flu and sat under a tree above a 5-6m rock near the efflux to get some sleep, whilst Jim Gould said it was this way and away they went, up the hill. When he woke, Lloyd looked up and behold, he saw a faint arrow marked in the tree, and then another faint arrow and becoming interested he went up the range straight up to BD-1 entrance. Lucky he knew the description of the entrance. He shouted to the others and it took them about an hour for them to reach Lloyd. Lloyd took a few photos at the rear of the cave, which he still has somewhere, with a 35mm camera. Later the members of the club, many of whom worked at the Tallawarra Power Station, used to walk down the Krawaree track and carried a great deal of "gelly" to remove obstructions in the efflux. Lloyd was in Western Australia when much of the early walking was undertaken, and he only ever drove into the area.
Gordon Sykes, Wolfgang Stengal, Harley Atkins, Rowland Knabe, Bill Wilton, Frank Hendricks and Lloyd would blast the rock at the Efflux. Later Harley Atkins used a hammer drill and generator to drill the holes. A question was raised "Why did they go into the efflux and not look for something else?" Lloyd's answer - They thought the water flowed from the main cave. Water still runs from the tunnel now. Roland and Lloyd used to cut planks similar to a mine to make their workings safe, because they were going further into the limestone - about 20-30m. Occasionally broken formation would flow out.
Bill Bevan brought in the club's 2000 watt generator to the site and the members spent a number of consecutive weekends working on the efflux, carrying the gravel out by hand or packing it in the sides of the cavern. They didn't come to Bendethera in wet weather because there was so much water flowing out of the tunnel. One week long trip was wasted through water problems.
Stay tuned for further adventures in Speleology and general mayhem!