The Descent of Goanna

The trip into Goanna had an unexpected surprise. I had heard of this cave back in 2011 but only by name and that it was a great cave by all accounts. What no-one had really mentioned was the fat tat it had probably one of the best abseil pitches in all of the cave at Buchan - a 35 meter free hanging drop, followed by about another 20 meter drop against a wall to the cave bottom.

The plan for this weekend was to tackle a couple of caves that we had not visited before. Two we new where they were, M207 and M209, and M47 for which we had vague locations which proved to be our undoing on the Sunday as we spent a huge amount of time trying to find it and to no avail.

Our first cave for the weekend was M209 which had a little entrance and disappointingly a gate just into the entrance. The reason for the gate was later explained and was due to the discovery of some bones that warranted investigation. So that cave took very little time.

Our next cave was M207 or Goanna. The Karst index describes it as a shallow shaft of approximately 3 to 4 meter deep. Further leads unlikely. So the entrance fairly well matched the description. Once in this cave a small passage and a bit of a squeeze lead to a larger chamber, the size of a small room. I noticed a bolt on one of the far walls and thought that it was there for a purpose and generally that purpose is to provide a secure anchor for a deep hole. The floor sloped away as I was reluctant to get too close to the edge as the floor progressively dropped away. The rest of the team came down into the chamber. A small stone revealed the rough depth of the cave. On that basis we decided to have lunch and get the 60 meter rope as we felt that this would be more adequate than the 30 meter rope that we had brought down with us.