Part 2 - Brilliant, Beautiful, Bright; Bikes, Buffalo and Blacklion

Caving is like fun, only different.

Winter 1993. 43 mins and 20 seconds before last orders. Irish border between the Republic and the North. 

“Quick quick Terry put the pipe away, we’re at the checkpoint”. “Relax man, just let me finish off this beer. It’ll be grand”. We approach the marked lines on the road with the Red stop light facing us. On either side of the road there are tall colour bond steel fences. CCTV cameras are pointed at us and no doubt microphones listening in too. There is a tower above, similar to a control tower at an airport only on a smaller scale of 1:5. We wait in anticipation for the Green light, signalling us to pass through unmolested. I’m feeling apprehensive, maybe its because I’m really stoned, hoping the dreaded left arrow doesn’t illuminate, indicating the border forces want to take us in for questioning and a good look at our vehicle. Who knows what goes on behind those walls.

“Its only the pot head student cavers from Dublin, just wave them through”. “No, no. Not Bombs. Bongs”. The light goes green. My pulse lowers from 3x10⁴ beats per minute to a more manageable 82. In all the many years we spent caving in the North, we never did see that little left arrow. “Tony, put the foot down or we won’t get last pints in”.

The four of us charge through the door of the Blacklion pub. “Howya, Lads”, greeted our barman,” bit wet this weekend for you isn’t it?”. None of us probably even listened to the weather on the radio, or looked at the paper or even dialed the weather service, that one cost money. Spending money meant less beer. “16 pints of Plain please”.  We sat back, guzzled the pints and jawed to some of the locals we knew. The bar man knew we came up from Dublin, but he used to ask us the same question every weekend, “have you no homes to go to?”. The call was made, “OK lads, bin it”. The remainder of the pints were sculled, we jumped back into the car, drove for 15 or 20 mins and parked on the side of the road. It was probably 12:30am at this stage. It wouldn’t be unusual for it to be raining or sleeting, this is Ireland we are talking about here. We would sit in the car and pass around the Pipa and probe each other, seeing who was brave enough to extract themselves from the warm safe life support provided within the Vehicle, out into the cold dark void of the Co. Fermanagh countryside. Its one thing stripping off into rain or sleet into your nip, but its another pulling up a wetsuit to the point where the cold wet neoprene just decides to make first contact with your balls, “FFFAARRrkkkkk”. Sometimes we would spend what seemed like hours walking around the paddock, calling out to each other. “Al. Where’s the fucking entrance gone ?” to realise that you were the only one still wandering around outside and everyone else was in the relative safety of the cave out of the wind and rain. Friday night caving trips were generally a weekend warmup and limited to a couple of hours. After all we did need to get up the next morning and hit Tullyhona house B&B for a large cooked breakfast and get underground for a big trip of 8 to 15 hours. Al claimed for many years that he was a vegetarian. “I only eat Chicken and mince” he would remind the lady as we came through the door. “Take off those dirty boots”, she would scold in a motherly tone, “you never let me know that you are coming”. At the ripe old age of 22, I wasn’t able to plan my next pint, never mind my next breakfast!. Caving is a sport for drinkers and stoners. As you are going underground its dark anyway, so there is no great rush getting it all done during daylight hours. We liked to be up and going by the crack of Lunch. We used to stay in a small old run down farmhouse building called Agnahoo. One morning there was a knock at the door. On answering it, we were a little surprised to find an M16 greeting us on the other side. Behind the M16 was a patrol of about 8 – 10 UDR soldiers, including one dude with a different hat to the others, so presumably he was in charge. “Hello Sir, what can I do for you”, I exclaimed. My standard greeting to anyone pointing a gun at me. Two republic registered vehicles in an old deserted farmhouse in the North had raised suspicion to the wandering patrol. We invited them in for a look around. Fortunately, they were more interested in looking for explosives than Bongs. They told us to be careful, said it was going to be wet and went on their merry way. Everyone thinks they are meteorologists these days! “Alright Crackpots, I hope everyone has charged their lamps. Grab those Mars bars. Where’s the rope bag?  Let’s go Caving!”.

Its been many years since I have immersed myself in Speleological activities, Potholing or Spelunking as the yanks would say. Now, 23 years later, we were driving up Mt.Buffalo to do a reconnaissance trip into the underground river cave before taking the kids in. We had heard reports of some of the local guides and other self-appointed figureheads trying to stop people going caving without paying for a tour. I wasn’t even sure if we needed a permit, which would not be unusual in Australia and my New South Wales fun license wasn’t valid in Victoria. We decided to take the approach of looking for forgiveness rather than permission. My initial general response when I get in trouble for something in Australia is “I’m from Ireland” and I have had a great deal of success with it. Example: Park or Council Ranger “You need a beech permit to drive that vehicle here…!”. ”I’m from Ireland”. “Oh, ok. Make sure you get one next time”. I don’t know if I get away with stuff because they:

1. Just like the Irish and think we are a bunch of merry drunks
2. Think there are no permits or rules in Ireland
3. Think the Irish just can’t seem to grapple with the not so subliminal messaging plastered all over the signage “Beech Permit Required”.

Al, on the other hand, takes the slightly less than diplomatic approach with the following frequently used stanza, “Fuck off and don’t be annoying me”.

I dragged myself on my belly on the gravel cave floor in the cold stream water, my helmet pressed up against the cave roof. Back in the day, we were tough enough to withstand the searing challenge of the sun and the wind and driving rain, but now I felt about as mobile as an 80 year old.  Al charged ahead, reaming the cave for me. Like dormant Malaria springing back into action, Al’s caving prowess returned as soon as he hit the streamway.  I followed in hot pursuit. We recced the whole cave and estimated it to be about 300M in length. Cave is a bit of an extravagant word for it. In truth, it’s a big Granite rock fall or boulder choke collapsed onto the stream. 

We went back two days later with the kids to bring them through. Enthusiasm was relatively high. We all kitted up in wetsuits, helmets and more lamps than you could shake a stick at. The cave was impregnated by climbing down through a series of boulders and straight into the cold dark stream. There was a little swim required. Zak’s enthusiasm rapidly diminished to that of someone looking forward to a sixty hour work week. He had enough. “You go on with the girls Al, I’ll bring him out.” We scrambled back out into the warm Sun. Forty Minutes later Al and the girls appeared, they were out too.  The girls had enjoyed the experience but they were cold. They went through to the cavern full of glow worms and then popped out the first exit and rock hopped back down stream to myself and Zak. Hopefully there will be more Caving in store for us on the Limestone coast of South Australia. 

The start of the Mt Buffalo TT was only an hour away and after fuelling up with sandwiches, fruit and muesli bars, Al “Joey Dunlop” Deering and the kids jumped on their mountain bikes and whizzed down the 20km of windy hairpins and switchbacks to the finish line in the hot valley air about 1000M below. Everyone was amped. Observations of “its really hot down here”, segwayed into a discussion on air mass instability. All the kids now understand lapse rates and that the Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate of air is 1°C per 100M. Shit, its on. Better go flying!

I spent 12 days flying in Bright over X-mas and new year and then again in the recent comp, but it wasn’t enough. Like a Heroin addict looking for the next Jab, I needed to get to Mystic fast for a flying fix. First flight on the new tandem was with co-pilot #1, Zak and his mate, 10kgs of water ballast. The forecast was for the wind to increase. I was primarily interested in doing a quick incident free flight to test out the glider as we were flying it in the bottom third of the weight range. Flight plan was Take off, Climb out and boat around for a bit and then go and Land at the LZ. Nice take off. Plenty of penetration. Smooth handling. Then we hit a screamer of a thermal and cored it. Zak has just started doing fractions in maths and felt it important to point out to me that only 2/3’s of the wing was flying. “Dad, have you ever stalled the wing”, he calmly and inquisitively asked me.  “Yeah man, I’ll tell you about that later!”. I was keen to land soon-ish just to see how the glider handled  before it got too bumpy in the LZ. The next day I took Caoimhe for a couple of flights. As she had not flown before, I wanted to do a sleddy from top to bottom, as the bumpy Mystic air during the heat of the day could turn anyone off a first flight. Flight #2 required an aborted take off as I let the wing get ahead of me while launching. No point in taking any chances. We had fun, but it was a short flight. Niamh had no interest in departing the safety of Madre Terra.

I’m not sure it’s true that I get more conservative as I get older, maybe I do. What is true though, is the risk\reward ratio gets a lot more scrutiny. I think its inbuilt into your DNA. We are programed to survive to bring up our kids whether we like it or not and we don’t yet have the full source code available to edit and recompile. You may say Flying and Caving are dangerous. I would probably agree to the extent that they are unforgiving or possibly even unsafe. Safe is sitting at home on your couch, being programmed by your TV, which could ultimately lead to health problems in one form or another. To me that’s not living. You only truly know you are alive after an experience that brings you closer to danger or possibly even death. Other activities or pursuits that are deemed to be safe can have factors in there that you just do not have any control over, as I have attempted to describe in the examples below:

1. Driving down the freeway. No warning. Not your fault. Crash. Bang. Your life is over. You are not playing Sega Rally so your $2 doesn’t get you 2 more lives.
2.   Rock Fisherman. “Oh look at that really big wave approaching us at that phenomenal speed. There must be tens of thousands of cubic meters of water there. Why isn’t there anyone else here to see it too…?” 
3.   Horse. “I can attempt to land this probably manageable 2 Meter jump with this 567 Newton weight on my back. There is a probability associated with the risk of breaking a leg and being put down. Or, I can abruptly stop in 2.37M, execute a 180 degree turn and go over there to that nice field of carrots for a munch…..”

The Porpunkah waterhole was always high on our daily agenda. Nice cool water and deep pools to escape the 35+ °C temperatures. The kids (Al, included) impressed themselves and anyone who would look at them, by executing a series of triple axel reversals with 2 pi radian twist’s. Pity I didn’t have the camera rolling …...

The first injury of the trip was at the BMX track when Zak, while grinding the lip and hucking a transitional rollback into a failed tailwhip, received a handlebar in the temple. He ended up with quite a bruise and was possibly a little concussed. Zak later reported that he lost about 2.32Gb of Memory. Fortunately, it was nothing an icepack, a cold drink and a big cuddle couldn’t fix on this occasion. I’ve been telling Zak since he was about 2, that most of the pain goes away in two or three minutes. When he stacks, I see him there in great discomfort, taking the pain. I saunter over and casually suggest that he sits down and has a rest for 5 minutes. “NO”. Up he jumps and off he goes again. The ground was a lot softer when I was 8 than it is today!

Off to the Victorian Coast .........