Tony in Wonderland

Have you ever seen joy like that on anyone's face. Tony Pfeifer the owner of Rosedale1 Cave, inspecting his property for the first time.

Tony is over 80 yrs old and lives in Bunyan New South Wales in Australia.

Tony, who has been the owner of the Cloyne property for the last 50 years, expressed a desire to see his cave, as he had never seen the inside of it, so we put together a trip for him.

As this cave has a vertical corkscrew enty there was some discussion on how best to lower (and raise) a non caver safely.

Well here's the way we did it...

Bruce Stewart put together the rigging. Tony was fitted out with a sit harness and a shoulder harness. His main carabina was fitted with a large rescue pulley. There was no natural belay points outside the cave, so we used the 4WD vehicle's bull bar as a belay point.

The Abseil was of the order of 30 metres down a 1 metre corkscrew hole which opened up into a large chamber some 15 metres down.

Tony's pulley was positioned on a 50 metre rope, giving a 2 to 1 advantage in either direction. One end of the rope went through an abseil device. The other end was rigged with a 2 ascender haul system utilising a short rope and a pulley to give a 2 to 1 advantage.

A bag of rocks was used to reset the hauling ascender for each stroke of the system.

Bruce was able to operate the entire system on direction from below, and raise or lower Tony as required at any time.

A portable generator feeding a 1000 watt light ensured that Tony would have plenty of light to view his lovely cave.

It is no wonder that he has a smile on his face in the accompanying photo!!

This is Bruce, who masterminded the ingenious rigging used to lower and raise Tony on this adventure.

Bruce is shown (right) as he came down to see us on the last pitch in cave # 3 Windlass Pit, Bendethra New South Wales in Australia

 This is some of what Tony saw in his cave