Josh Richards - The Engelbrechts east extension, Mount Gambia - The Scuba GOAT Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Matt Waters (00:09):
Hey, there dive buddies. And welcome to the
penultimate show of seasonthree. Today I'm talking to a
man who doesn't actually knowhow to say no in life. A diver,
soldier, Royal Marine, comedian,author, ginger cave diving
Wombat, and even a candidate fora one way trip to Mars. Josh
Richards has hit the mainstreammedia recently with his findings

(00:31):
of a cave extension in MountGambia, and Josh joins me today
to talk through some of his lifeadventures. And of course, that
fantastic find, and it'sexploration. Welcome to the
show, buddy.

Josh Richards (00:41):
Hey, think I'm good. Thanks for having me.

Now, we've obviously brought you on the
show to talk about caves andstuff like that. But let's back
it way back up and just find outa little bit more about you
because I think this is thefirst time I've ever had well,
not only a comedian, but aginger and someone that could
possibly have lived on Mars.
Ticking a lot of boxes.

I try. I definitely try it. Yeah, I've
always called it career add. Solet's try and do things at once
all at once and do them allrelatively poorly. But just keep
crashing out it as hard as Ican.

Well, how did you how did you get into the diving
side of things to start with?

I started diving very early, to be honest with
your dad was a was a diver forthe Army for a very long time.
He started doing recreationalcivilian diving, sort of in the
early 80s, I think, became aScuba instructor. So I grew up
with it right from before I wasborn. That was diving and

(01:48):
teaching and all that sort ofstuff. So by the time it finally
rolled around to me sort ofhitting 12 I was already well
and truly ready to do sort of myjunior open water. I think my
oldest Patti certification isfrom when I'm nine I think it's
like a junior skin diver orsomething like that. And so
like, very much a water babystarted very, very early.

(02:08):
There's a great photo of me withmy dad's like his old aqualung
regulator and one of these masksin the bathtub at age six. So
yeah, it started very early. Ikind of stepped in and out of
it. It became very much a thingthat I did with my dad, mom and
dad was Dad had left the army along time before. And sort of

(02:31):
all through my teens, it wasmainly sort of Cray fishing and
I don't I don't like Cray fish.
I don't eat Cray fish. But itwas a it was a thing to do.
Obviously, also ginger, whichmeant going out on the boat got
sunburned. I tend to get alittle bit seasick. So it's like
it wasn't a great combination ofthings. There's still a little
bit of like, teenage trauma ofbeing sort of dragged out to go

(02:53):
on these fishing trips with Dadgo to place like gnarly fishing
station and dive with Tigersharks and hammerheads, and all
that sort of stuff while tryingto fish. And that was my teenage
years. And I sort of went youknow what this, this kind of
sucks, stepped away from it,went to university, joined the
army myself and started showingan interest in the diving side

(03:16):
of things. From there, I kind ofwent down the pathway of
becoming a open waterinstructor. I did all my
technical diving, all mytechnical training now open
circuit tech, probably early20s. Same year that I became a
PADI instructor. Same year Ibecame an SSI instructor, again,
multi add overload ad to do allthe things at once. I kind of

(03:39):
stepped back from all that Ileft the army and moved across
to the Navy as a diver, whichwas fairly short lived. Lots of
paperwork, lots of being stuffedaround and sort of going through
the whole defence circus was notgreat. So I kind of turned
around to the Australian DefenceForce and went you know, you can
you can stick this and move tothe UK and join the Royal Marine

(04:02):
commandos. And the idea wasYeah, going through and becoming
a combat swimmer for those guys.
So why the

hell? What? What sparked that one? I mean, I'm ex
forces myself not not a bootneck like you guys, when you
guys were digging trenches. Iwas booking into five star
hotels.

Nice. Yeah. My grandfather on my again, on my
dad's side, there's quite a lot.
There's a long military historythrough my both sides of my
family, particularly my dad'sside, I think. I don't say this
too often to folks from the UK,but the furthest we've traced
the family name back to is isactually the the Oliver

(04:41):
Cromwell's right hand man thatbrought some of the engineering
across from the Dutch to knockdown castle walls. Wow. Yeah. So
our army Army engineers, I wasan Army engineer. dad was an
engineer as well. They're calledsappers, and it comes from the
Dutch term SAP where you woulddig trenches towards a castle
wall We'll dig under the walland then pack it full of hay and

(05:01):
wood and set it on fire and itwill drop the walls down. And
that's where the Army Engineerssort of get their name from. And
yet turns out my great, great,great, great, great, great,
whatever was the guy thatbrought that technology across
from the Dutch to help OliverCromwell knocked down castle
walls. So I don't say I didn't Inever said that. When I was a
botnet. I never told anyone thatwhile I was in, but yeah, it's

(05:22):
long history on that side ofthings. So I kind of Yeah. After
I got washed traitor with theATF, I sort of went What do I
do? And that sort of turnaroundsent Well, there's two options
for it. You can either learnFrench and become join the
Foreign Legion or you can useyour your ancestry visa, use

(05:43):
your your heritage, and go andjoin the Royal Marines. So I
opted for number two.

Okay. And dad, Dad's originally British is he?

Dad's dad's family's British, so dad was
born in Australia, but all therest of the family is Welsh. So
my 240s and let's see, I know, Iknow, the white lines a lot.
Well, ironically, that's quitedark. Like it doesn't. doesn't
explain Yeah, anyway.

I was life in the in the Marines. I mean, I've got
a lot of respect for theMarines.

It was interesting. The reality for me
was that I was very good at it.
But I hated what it was turningme into. I felt myself falling
into a role where I was prettymuch an enforcer was a few years
older than most of the guys thatI was going through training
with. I was one of the few thathad previous experience. And I
was scared of the things theseguys were doing, that was going

(06:48):
to wind up them dying. They weredifferent. We had recruits die
during training. There werethings that happens where Yeah,
and I, I stepped into quite a anaggressive, nasty role that I
really didn't like this angrylittle five foot six ginger kid
from Australia, screaming atthese six foot three county
rugby players. Because theywould, they were making mistakes

(07:13):
and not realising how dangerousthe mistakes they were making
were. So I didn't like what itturned me into. They were very
much at the time, this is all2010. So it was, we were all
gearing up to here to head outand deploy on Herrick 1314. And
so it was everyone's going toAfghanistan, everyone's heading

(07:34):
out. Everyone was on a warfooting. Everyone would be going
out. If you weren't doingtraining afterwards. To become a
driver, or modern or whateveryou were doing casualty
replacement, like you wereheading straight out. And quite
a few of the guys that I trainedwith, went straight out as soon
as they finished training. Soit's one of the unique things

(07:55):
about the Royal Marines, they'rethe only unit in the world where
you're your final sort of yourfinal four months of training is
preparation for war, you candeploy directly out of basic
training, and are the only unitthat does it. So it was pretty
scary on that front. I got areal test for recognising I
suppose that I didn't want to bethere. So

So from you know, you've done the Marines bit and
then decided it's time to bangout was that the return to
Australia then a

little bit. I actually love living in the UK.
And the reality with the withthe Royal Marines was I got
sick, we got bitten by a tickout on double. Didn't sort of
recognise it. I didn't know itwas gonna I've been bitten by
hundreds of ticks with the Armyhere in Australia. But didn't
didn't give it a second thoughtcame back off this this
midwinter exercise that we'vedone, pull the tick off my

(08:53):
stomach and sort of went allright over whatever. And five
weeks later couldn't walk up aset of stairs that picked up
Lyme disease, and it justannihilated me. So I ended up
spending, I think it was about1012 weeks in rehab, the hill
and the stepping back from thehigh intensity and stepping back

(09:13):
from the push, push push. I hadan opportunity to actually think
about what I was doing, had anopportunity to see the guys that
I was training with, and some ofthe attitudes that they had
around different things and kindof recognise that I it's not
somewhere I wanted to be. Andthe the biggest reality out of
all of it was that I didn't Ididn't really belong in the

(09:36):
military. I was very good at it.
It was one and this is a commontheme for me being good at
different things, but actuallynot belonging there or not
wanting to be there. And seeingnasty elements in my personality
sort of come out because of thejobs that I'm doing. So yeah, it
was. In the end it was a fairlyeasy decision to make to leave.
My dad regularly asks like do Imiss it? And I know he misses it

(09:58):
now I have never missed any partof folks talk about like missing
their mates and boba and I dostill have some really great
mates. But not that many. And Icertainly wish I could unlearn
some of the things that Ilearned. So I, but I love the
UK, and I loved being there. Itwas an interesting time to be

(10:20):
there. And yeah, I ended upsticking around for a few years.
And that's essentially how I gotinto comedy. So I done a little
bit of stand up in Australiabefore I left, and didn't really
know what to do with myself andkind of went well, I can do this
comedy thing. While I try andfind a job, it'll give me
something, something sort of acenterline that I can hang on

(10:42):
to, while I reshape my entirelife that has previously been
based all around the military.
And, yeah, it drew me intocomedy. I ended up working for,
for an artist, or we ended upworking for Damien Hirst, out in
Gloucestershire for a while, ashis science advisor setting
things on fire. And yeah, doingdoing stand up. That's

(11:07):
essentially how I got into standup. And it was actually the
maths stuff that brought me backto Australia. I'd been doing it
for a few years, I've been doingstand up for a few years, I've
done a few tours, and wasgetting burnt out with it,
decided write a comedy showabout sending people one way to
Mars is kind of a metaphor forme leaving comedy, and found
this organisation that wasplanning to do it. So I signed

(11:29):
up and I decided the UK mediawould not going to want to chat
to some random Ozzie living inBrighton. So I came back to
Australia and started speakingto the media and speaking to
schools and folks like that hereinstead. So

let's see how

that's a bit of an adventure.

Adventure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we've we've done
the military book, we've donethe UK, we've done comedy, we've
come back, and we're now talkingabout Mars. Now, let, let's get
into the weeds of this one.
Because I kind of guarantee thatI'm never gonna have a possible
Martian on this. What's thewhat's the background, so it

(12:09):
could be a bit more detail on,on what you found.

So I going way back. I originally did a degree
in Applied Physics andpsychology. And as part of my
physics degree, we were lookingat all sorts of different
things. And I ended up reading apaper by a fairly well known guy
by the name of Professor PaulDavies, who was essentially
arguing that the first peoplegoing to Mars would have to go

(12:33):
one way based on the engineeringbased on the the changes to
their body, you realisticallyshould be planning to send
people one way, the challenge isto bring them back orders of
magnitude more than what it isto get them there and keep them
alive. So why not send them andkeep them there? And I remember
reading it back in the early2000s. And thinking, This is

(12:54):
awesome. Like, why the hellwould you want to come back
what's so great about Earth,like, get a chance to go and
live on another planet? Sign meup. And that idea kind of
circled back as I was looking atgetting out of comedy. And I
sort of went, you know, what Ido really, this is, it's a nice
metaphor, it's a chance to talkabout science, a lot of the
shows that I've done, had done,were based around science. The

(13:18):
science and religion havedoomsday and all sorts of weird
and wonderful, different thingsI loved using comedy as a
vehicle for sciencecommunication. So I went, you
know what we can write thiswhole show about Mars. I know
lots of stuff about Mars, let'swrite a show about Mars. And
we'll talk about how we shouldhave gone should go in there
2030 years ago. And again, bearin mind, this is 2010. So sort

(13:42):
of arguing that we've probablyprobably should have gone in the
90s and had the technology to goin the 90s. Why didn't we do it
in the show was originally goingto be quite better. I just
finished it. Edinburgh Fringefor the third or fourth year, I
think, and things have not gonewell. And I was pretty dark. And
I was done with comedy andwanted to write this quite

(14:03):
bitter, angry show about howhumanity sucked because we
hadn't gone past low Earth orbitsince 1971. And yet, the whole
thing spun around in aheartbeat. I again, was sitting
in a little cafe in Brighton andstarted researching the show
typed Mars One way to try andfind the original article to
start sort of basing the showaround it. And Mars One had made

(14:26):
their first sort of publicannouncement about two or three
days before. And so my entirefeed from Google was filled out
with this announcement from thisbizarre Dutch based organisation
saying they were going to openapplications up for astronauts
and anyone from anywhere who wasover the age of 18, fit and
healthy and had the right sortof aptitude would be able to
apply. And so the comedy showinstantly changed. It went from

(14:50):
being said quite dark, quitebitter and saying why didn't we
do this? Humans suck, too. I amsigning up for this. They're
looking for a crew of four whoare the other three going to be
And I basically shaped theentire that particular comedy
show around the structure of aband, you need four different
kinds of personalities, and theykind of roughly meet up with the

(15:11):
same stereotype. So you get afour piece band. So like, you
know, a quirky, high maintenancelead singer that's sort of
leading and driving thingsforward. A bass player who kind
of keeps them in check a littlebit, a weirdo keyboard player
who's got specialist skills thatno one really understands. And a
drummer who just kind of keepseverything together. And as
always happy, just consistent.
And always looking for those,those three other band members,

(15:35):
I suppose. And that was, whichwas

Which one were you to start with,

I was arguing that I was the lead singer.
Because I was writing the comedyshow, the reality is I'm not.
The reality is I'm probably muchmore of a quirky weirdo keyboard
player who does Nietzschean andget really involved in
specialist skills. Yeah, but Ioften I need to be offset by
other folks who I can takecharge, I will live willingly

(16:04):
take charge, but it's notsomething I want to do. So I'm
much more interested in Yeah,having a specialist set of
skills that I can help out withrather than trying to run the
whole thing. So I ended upwriting another three shows
around all of it, and turn twoof them into books and all sorts
of stuff. So it's been, it'sbeen a big 10 years. And it's

(16:25):
realistically only in the lastcouple of years, I've stepped
back from all of the Mars sideof things, focused on cave
diving, the programme itselfshut down at the end of last
year, they sort of went, theycouldn't get the funding, they'd
run into a lot of roadblocks,and they sort of finally decided
that it was going to be a littlebit too much for that particular
project. But I still speak aboutit a lot. I still visit schools,

(16:49):
I still had I had a schoolcontact me last week sort of
booking me for National ScienceWeek, in August, next year.
There's still a lot of interest,still a lot of people who want
to talk about it. It's just ashame that the specific
programme that I was involvedwith has shut down. But

well, it's it's it's such a an amazing, you
know, concept, you know, let'slet's, let's do this thing,
what's, you know, you sign upfor it and say, Hey, you can
apply? What's that? What's theprocedure that you're gonna have
to go through though, because, Imean, you've only got a look at
those two on the screen rightnow you're five foot six. And
twice your body weight, I'mgonna take up far too much.

So I'm out, I fit a little bit better. It's, it's
an interesting one. There's alot of a lot of preconceptions
around what people expect anastronaut to be. And the reality
is what we actually want forpeople going to Mars is
radically different from theright stuff. It's been a running
joke for all of us that theright stuff is the wrong stuff

(17:47):
for Mars. Those a typepersonalities very driven, very
competitive, you know, fittest Ican run further, I can do more
push ups, all that sort ofnonsense. It's the exact
opposite of what we actuallywant. I've joked quite regularly
about us really wanting to sendfor Homer Simpsons, to Mars.
Homer Simpson is blended withlike MacGyver. Richard Dean

(18:10):
Anderson, not the new MacGyver,but like Richard Dean Anderson
with a mullet, MacGyver. As askill set, you really want folks
who can fix lots of problems,they can improvise, they can,
you know, they're generalists.
They're not the top of anyparticular game, they are very,
very broad in their knowledge,they can always get specialist
information and backup andsupport from people back on

(18:31):
Earth. But because of the timedelay between the two planets,
it takes anywhere between threeand 45 minutes to send
communications backwards andforwards between Earth and Mars,
you can get that information.
But if something's gone horriblywrong, you need folks who can
act quickly in an emergency tostabilise the situation, and

(18:51):
then get guidance and adviceback from Earth. So you kind of
want couch potatoes, who sitaround not do a whole lot, watch
a whole lot of Netflix, keep aneye on the plants keep things
running, especially for thefirst two years. And then later
on, you might have the moreadventurous types who will start
going outside the habitat goingand exploring different areas

(19:12):
going and venturing out. Butwe're, we're actually there's a
lot more parallels between folksgoing to Mars and folks that we
send down to Antarctica, or wesee on nuclear submarines or
long range Arctic patrols.
There's a lot of parallels withthose kinds of personalities.
And I don't know if you've everdealt with submarines, but they
are weird. And that's the kindof personnel that's, that's

(19:35):
actually the kind of people wewant to send rather than these
high performance fighter pilottypes. We want we kind of want
to send folks who create theirown culture. They know what they
need to know really well, butthey're also very general and
they're happy to learn and happyto laugh and they might appear
weird from the outside, butinside their particular group,
they've got a very strongculture that supports each other

I think one of the main things there is you're
going to have to have fourpeople that are gonna get on for
a long period of time in a verysmall space.

And the other interesting one, this is
probably one that the militarydoesn't deal with as much is
it's also a mixed gender crew.
So it's two men or two women. Sothere's all those other dynamics
that come in, when you you havea mixed gender crew, we need
that, basically, for stability.
Because you put four guystogether, they're going to kill
each other within a few months.
For women together, they'reprobably going to kill each

(20:29):
other within a few months. Butthere's all these complex
dynamics that need to benavigated through all of that as
well. So the big thing that MarsOne was going to do, they were
screening us out. So they were Ishouldn't even screeners that we
were screening ourselves out,they were asking us really hard
questions, getting us to dothese applications to fill out
videos, and getting us to thinkabout what we were doing. And

(20:50):
most folks actually dropped outthemselves. They weren't kicked
out by miles one or excluded oranything like that. They
decided, Oh, actually, no, nowthat I've thought about this,
this is not for me. And theypulled themselves out of the
programme. We went from 202,586,initially, down to the last 100
candidates. And realistically,it was the cut from it was the

(21:13):
psych interview that we did,that reduced the group from
about 660 down to that final100. That was the first time
Mars One actually were excludingpeople, they had good
candidates, good people in thatlist. But they decided not to go
with them because they weren'tas good as someone else was. So
it was a really interestingprocess to go through the actual

(21:35):
selection process all up,started in 2013, from memory
applications closed in August of2013. And actually announced
that 100 In February of 2015. Sorealistically, the five, six
years after that, that we'vebeen sort of, it's just been
waiting. And it's been a wholelot of waiting for the next

(21:58):
phase, where they'd startputting us together, put us into
stressful situations, see how wework together and teams problem
solve, all those sort of thingsthat never eventuated?
Unfortunately,

yeah, yeah, I can imagine that the last thing that
we're looking for is alpha malesthat are just going to upset the
applecart

we, I'll say it now that the programme shut
down, we had a, we had a few.
And we, we also had a littlesecret Facebook group, a secret
Facebook group, where all of uscould get in there and chat
amongst ourselves. And I don'tthink I would be alone in saying
that. There were a lot of us outof that 100, that were very
concerned about a couple ofspecific individuals turning up,

(22:36):
not yet no point delving intointo it too deeply. But those
sorts of folks, they showedtheir colours very early on. We
all tried to give everyone asmuch as best a chance as
possible. And I had a couple ofinteresting situations where I
had potentially a really greatimpression of someone that I'd

(22:59):
seen do interviews, I'd emailedthem, I'd done all sorts of
different things. And then I metthem in person and went, Oh,
God, no, no, no, there is no waywe're going to Mars together.
And likewise, folks who Iabsolutely wrote off folks who I
sort of thought no, like they'rean idiot, based on their
interviews based on all sorts ofdifferent interactions, I would

(23:22):
then meet them and sort of go ornot 100% Sure. And then step
back from the situation and go,Oh, wait, no, no, he's, he's 22.
Like, he's still figuringhimself out. Or he, you know,
she was in an incrediblystressful situation at that
particular time. And so yeah,it's been interesting,

(23:44):
interacting with all of thesedifferent candidates and getting
an impression of who they are aspeople. And actually seeing them
over 10 years or five, six yearsthat we've all been shortlisted,
seeing them actually develop aspeople as well. It's been really
interesting. I've made somereally fantastic friends out of
it. But yeah, there weredefinitely a few folks that we
were we're hoping wouldn't befurther shortlisted later on,

(24:07):
because they would not be thegreat would not be the kind of
people you'd want to go campingwith.

Yeah. Oh, well, it would, you know, from the guys
that are running the show, itwould make sense to leave people
like that and just to see howyou react

to it, then they discuss that as well. There's
definitely testing that would goon, and there are definitely
elements, they were deliberatelythey weren't being very upfront
about deliberately creatingstressful environments for us.
There was going to be five orsix days of essentially
corporate team building, butwith all the controls taken off

(24:44):
it so the kind of, you know, yougo and do a corporate team
building weekend and you kind ofbuilt do challenges and build
things together. Now make thosesame things competitive. Now
make everyone it completely andutterly exhausted with sleep
deprivation and Make it anenvironment where you know,
you're pushing to be part of aselect group of 12 to 24 people

(25:06):
that would start the training,it probably would have gotten
quite ugly quite quickly. And sothose more hostile
personalities, hopefully wouldhave been filtered out in the
first couple of days. But I knowthat they would have left some
people in because some folks,it's, it's that whole thing of
some folks push limits, andother folks pull back. And you

(25:28):
don't want a completelyconservative group. And you
don't want to complete theprogressive group, you want that
internal tension. But it's aboutthat group finding a balance
with that tension, so that, youknow, so and so pisses me off,
but they come up with fantasticideas, and so and sofas has me
off, because they are alwaysholding things back. But

(25:49):
sometimes I need to be heldback, so I don't go and do
stupid things. So it's aboutfinding that crew dynamic that
works for everyone.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Now, how confident are you
that you got down to thewhittling stick?

I, I don't know.
I am still not entirelyconvinced that I have got the
right personality type for andsince the programme shut down,
and I've started gettinginvolved in other things, I've
become even less certain aboutthat. At the time I was quite I
was like, you know, I'm, I'm notcertain, but I'm going to do
everything I can to make this areality. I've shaped my entire

(26:24):
life around this, I've become anambassador for I've cut off
relationships, I've done allsorts of different things to
make Mars my life. And then aswe all started to sort of lose a
bit of faith in it. And theneventually the project shut
down. I started questioning alot more of that, and started to
sort of recognise that, hey, Ido have a lot more to offer here

(26:46):
on Earth, I've got a lot ofthings that I could be doing.
And maybe, you know, completelyand utterly obsessing on this
one thing, which To its credit,kept me focused for 10 years,
which nothing else has ever donefor keeping me on the track for
that. Maybe there's other thingsI could do. So I'm still

(27:07):
uncertain. I'm glad that I gotas far as I did. I feel like I
would have been in for a decentchance to get through the next
cut into this into the group ofthe 12 to 24 people that would
actually start 10 years oftraining. Whether or not I would
have been on that first crew, II've always said I don't care.

(27:29):
And I that's one thing I'm very,very certain about. I've never
actually cared about any of it,whether I was specifically part
of it, the important thing forme was that someone was doing
it. It was always about someonegetting involved. And the best
way for me to advocate forpeople going and living on other
planets was to put my hand upand sign to be there to be one
of the folks who go yes, I wouldhave 100% do this, and advocate

(27:52):
for that. So whether or not Ipersonally was the right person
for it. I don't know. I maynever know. But I knew the best
way to support the ideas tosupport what I wanted to see
happen was to put my hand up for

effort at first.
And what a hell of an experience

it was there. It was an adventure. I think we we
figured it out that I spoke tosomething like 130,000 kids over
the space of seven or eightyears like it was Yeah. And to
me, that's the biggest thingthat was the far more important
thing out of it. If, if anastronaut had come and visited
my school, when I was in yearseven, when I was 12, or
something like that, it wouldhave changed my whole life, I

(28:39):
almost certainly wouldn't havegone into the military, I
probably would have gone down afar more focused pathway with
science engineering, even morethan what I did. I'm glad for
the experience that I had, I'mglad that I went off and did all
the different things that I did,because it did make me a good
candidate for what they werelooking for. But if someone had

(29:01):
come along and visited my myschool when I was in primary
school and talked about how whenI grew up, I'd have the
opportunity to you know,potentially live on another
planet, it would have made ahuge impact for me. So that was
the much bigger thing that wasfar more important for me than
whether or not the project eversucceeded. It was being able to
basically go and speak to yearsix and sevens in particular,

(29:24):
and sort of say hey, science ispretty awesome don't lose
interest in it get involved. Andthere's really cool things that
you can do if you if you pursuethis so yeah, I'm happy about
that right.

It's a great age to get them as well because perfect
I even going on nearly 50 yearsold I still remember being a kid
and wishing that I was going tobe an astronaut one day and fly
through fly to the moon. Youknow what to have a dude rock up
and say, you know, this is whatwe're gonna do. It's it's like
wow,

yeah. And even if my biggest hope with all of it
was not that I would Don'tnecessarily walk on Mars, it
would be that potentially one ofthe 130, something 1000 kids
that I spoke to, they would doit, it's far more important for
me that that idea is supported.
And of those kids, you know,maybe one or two would have the

(30:16):
opportunity to go and walk onanother planet. But 10s of 1000s
of the others would be involvedin industries that would be
supporting that would be makinglife better on earth, all these
different elements. So it's abit like, you know, a kid
wanting to be a fighter pilot,when, when I was in my early
teens, I wanted to be a fighterpilot, I want to fly FA teens.

(30:37):
And learning more about thatlater on. It's like, you've got
one fighter pilot, but you'vegot a crew of, you know, 100
plus people who refuel it, domaintenance on it. Like,
directed after a flight. So youknow, there's hundreds of, of
people hours that go into asingle flight hour for an F 18.

(31:01):
Same as you know, driving fones, you've got this enormous
crew of people that support onedriver, the drivers just at the
pointy ends, and we all sort ofgo, Oh, that's amazing. But
there's a massive crew of peoplethat are there to support it. So
I suppose I wanted to inspirekids by talking about walking on

(31:22):
another planet, but alsoencourage the ones who wouldn't
necessarily do that themselves,but then might go and build
rovers that support the peopleon Mars, and all those different
things. So that was far moreimportant for me than actually
succeeding. Ever was

good on you, mate.
And, obviously, you're stillvery active, we're doing the
public speaking for the kids isthat going to just continue as
long as you can,

I'd like to, I don't actively pursue it
anymore. It is a little bitcomplicated for me, because I
have to add that sort of thatlittle asterix on the end of it
turn around and saying, I'm notgoing anymore. If someone
offered me an opportunity, I'dsign up again, in a heartbeat.
But the project that I wasinvolved in has shut down. And

(32:09):
that kind of, especially when itcomes to the corporate speaking
side of things, corporate wantto talk to someone who's who's
who's doing going places,schools are much more flexible.
They're sort of go oh, you know,we'd like you to come and talk
about Mars, you're a mathspecialist. But the corporate
speaking, the keynote side ofthings is definitely dialled

(32:29):
down quite a bit. And COVIDknocked a huge hole in it as
well, that basically put a stopto pretty much everything for a
while there. And, but you know,different things. One of the
cool things about the cavediving side of stuff was
shifting out of as Mars One waskind of winding down. I found an
interest in the love for cavediving. And so I'm in the

(32:52):
process at the moment of sort ofgoing well, if I'm not talking,
if we're not doing corporatekeynotes about Mars anymore.
Maybe I can start doingcorporate keynotes about cave
exploration. So it's, yeah, I'm,I'm writing that transition
phase. At the moment, I thinkthe next few months will decide
whether or not I want to pursuethat if I actually want to talk
to people anymore. Or, or, if Iyeah, I focus on on book

(33:17):
writing, which is one of theother things that I've
absolutely loved for the last 10years or so.

Well, it's, I think it's a nice transition that you
know, the concept of living onanother planet. And then I
explained to people, you know,people ask why I go dive and
it's actually visiting anotherworld without leaving this
planet. And you know, what youdo and what many other awesome
dudes and dudettes do is cavedive in, which is taking that to

(33:45):
the extreme even more. I hatsoff to you. Yeah, crazy.

So Kate diving is an interesting one. For me. I
again, I've been diving most ofmy life, but it's mostly felt
like work. So you know, divingwith dad getting crayfish, you
know, animals that I don't eat.
And it's that always kind offelt a bit like work but you
know, you're doing it with that.
It's kind of an you know, that'sa fun experience. And then doing

(34:18):
with the Navy, obviously wasactual work. If I'd gone on to
do it with the Royal Marines, itwould have been more work.
Teaching Scuba always felt likework to me always felt like I
was pushing people through acourse. So we'd be able to go
and do cool stuff afterwards. Itwas never about them learning or
I'm not a I'm not a teacher likethat. I'm not the kind of person

(34:40):
who goes are you know, I see thejoy in someone's eyes when they
finally understand. I'm like,good you finally learnt this
crap. Let's move on and go anddo something cool. And I've I
suppose in the last 12 months orso I've kind of stepped into a
bit more of a especially amongstcave divers a bit more of a
mentoring role where I'm notTeaching people anything, but

(35:01):
I'm helping them get throughtheir, their their dives, if
they need to log a certainnumber of dives in a certain
number of sites, I will go anddo that with them. And I won't
say that's felt like work. Butit's been more of a case of I'm
helping them. I'm helpingfacilitate them move forward.
But yeah, definitely, I supposeI've had numerous people through

(35:23):
the years tell me Oh, you'd bean amazing teacher. I'm like,
I'd be a terrible teacher. LikeI, all I do is I push people
through to try and get them to acertification so that when we're
allowed to go and do somethingmuch cooler, like can you hurry
up and get through this? So wecan go and do that over there?
So the cave diving is verydifferent from me. There's no

(35:45):
sun. There's no Wrigley's tograb you. There's no, it's
literally you put your gear on.
You get in the water. And itdoes. Doesn't matter what time
of day it is, it doesn't matter.
Like you've always got lightson. So I've gone in and done
dives come out. And it's, youknow, the sun is set afterwards.
And you're like, holy crap, likewhere did that go? Or surfacing

(36:09):
especially in somewhere likeMount Gambier, it's raining as
you're gearing up, you'll getinto the water and you'll come
out and then you'll get asunburn as you're getting out of
the water, because the weatheris cleared. So it definitely
feels like a disconnect, youcompletely disconnect from the
rest of reality. While you're onthe dive. You're focused on the
dive, you might occasionallyhave stray thoughts about other

(36:30):
things, but generally, you'refocused on how deep are my how
far into the cave? Am I? Whereare we going next? Where do I
leave my stage? Cylinder?
You're, there's a whole raft ofdifferent things all happening
at once. Why are we doing this?
Where are we We're trying to getto all those. And I love that.
diving in the ocean. Like therunning joke with my partner is

(36:53):
that why would I dive in theocean whales shit in the ocean?
Like it's not it's not forcaves. Caves seem to be my
thing. I would cave dive everyday, if I could. Whereas I never
felt that level of passion fordiving in the ocean or teaching
people or anything else. I foundmy niche, I suppose.

Yeah. Well, so let's just wind it back a little
bit. How did we go from fromMars? And then back into dive
in? Did you have that that dryspell where you just literally
walked away from Scuba dive andthen came back to it?

Yeah. So I didn't dive for about seven or eight
years all up. And even after Ileft the military, I sort of I
looked at maybe teaching againand sort of went, I really know
not for me. Weirdly enough, itwas I ended up doing three
comedy shows about Mars. And thelast show that I did was called

(37:52):
Cosmic nomad. And I, the entirefocus around that book and show
the focus of the show at thetime it was originally a show
was looking at the things thatyou would do before you left
Earth. So you know, you've got10 years left on Earth, what do
you do with your time, and I'vehad a book 101 things to do for

(38:13):
you die that was given to me bya friend from high school. I've
had that for years, and I'veworked through it and ticked a
lot of different things off, butit started to reach a point
where it felt like a box tickingexercise. Yeah, I started as
part of this show. And then Idid it even more. So when I
turned it into a book, I reallystarted to ask myself, what are
the things I would want to dobefore I left Earth. And then

(38:36):
one thing that came throughcrystal clear through all of it
was cave diving. I'd neverlearned to cave dive, I'd read
about Dave shore, the Australianpilot for Cathay Pacific, who
died in Bushmans hole in 2005.
At 286 metres or whatever it wastrying to recover. Dion dries
body. And I that that book wassupposed to terrify people, like

(39:00):
when I read raising the dead itwas supposed to be this is
terrifying. This is so complex,but I read it and went, Oh my
God, I want to learn to dive ona rebreather and I want to dive
in cave. So that was my instantreaction to reading raising the
dead and it took a lot longer.
It took a very long time beforeI actually circled back around

(39:22):
to that and went this is the onething if I if I move to Mars and
had to live on a cold, dead,dusty planet, like an
underground Martian vampire forthe rest of my life. What's the
one thing I would miss? And itwas I said Scuba diving, and
then I started thinking about itmore. I was like, it's not the
Scuba diving. We'd be a littlebit weightless. It's only 1/3 of

(39:45):
Earth's gravity on Mars. We'dhave all that weightlessness
getting there. It's not theScuba diving. It's actually
learned cave dive. It'sdiscovering more and where does
this go and does this connect tothis and all those sorts of
things. So And it was, yeah, itwas a fairly big realisation for
me that I really wanted to learnto cave dive and I actually

(40:06):
stopped writing the book. Iturned, I was turning the show
into a book. And I actuallypaused right in the book for
about four or five months to goand learn to cave dive. So the
book is still written as if Ihadn't learned to cave dive, I
kind of had to put myself backinto a mindset of I haven't done
this yet. But it made a hugedifference. And it held up the

(40:31):
finishing of the book by quite abit. Because I had found
something that I'd always wantedto do my entire life and I was
finally doing it.

Yeah. And by this time, were you in Mount Gambia,

I ended up moving to mount Gambia for it. So I
went to Mount Gambier March2019. For my we call basic cave
entry level cave diving causethrough the CDA, it was a week
long. I had already organised ahouse set afterwards to work on
the book immediately afterwards.
And so I kind of I wanted tostay I really wanted to stick

(41:06):
around. I had a series of housesets after that, and I didn't
manage to get back to my Gambiauntil the August, at which point
I did the level to the caverated course. And during that
course, got offered a job at thedive shop that was in Mount
Gambier there for a while andhad another house set to go and
work on the book again, and thencame back in the October of that

(41:28):
year, and started working thereand started living in Mount
Gambier, essentially. So, I wasonly there for about four months
without delving into it toodeeply. That dive shop was
pretty, pretty hostile, a veryhostile working environment. And
I do not miss it. made some goodfriends out of it. But yeah, the

(41:50):
management was pretty subpar.
And I escaped in about February,and at the time, my, like, my
partner at the time, ended upnearly dying in a car crash
right before COVID started. Soyeah, 2020 was pretty intense.

(42:10):
We I wound up we, yeah, we werebroken up but I wound up being
who live in carer for 10 monthsto sort of help rehabilitate her
through COVID in Melbourne. Andthen yeah, it wasn't until the
end of 2020 that I moved backout to Mount Gambier properly
and took over the habitat theaccommodation for cave divers

(42:30):
out there, which I've now justsold as well. Always like a
hermit crab.

And let's just bear in mind that we're we've got a
fair few listeners that knownothing about Australia and
Mount Gambier. Can you paint apicture of kind of see and what
it's like down there,

short version, Mount Gambia probably looks and
feels a lot like the WestCountry of the UK. So it's
actually not doesn't feeldissimilar from where I was with
the Royal Marines aroundlympstone and Exeter and places
like that, rolling countryside,lots of pine forest. And all
that pine forest is therebecause it's an enormous

(43:12):
limestone cast. So the wholeregion, it's, it's all
limestone. It's all very soft.
The entire area has also beenlifted by volcanic activity. So
the most recent sort of volcanicactivity we've had in Australia
has lifted that whole region up.
And so we are essentially cavediving through old coral reefs

(43:33):
old sort of compacted what usedto be the ocean floor has now
been lifted up by this volcanicactivity, the water running
through it has created thesecaves. And so the whole areas
very lush, very green, gets lotsof rain, and has holes open up
in the middle of paddocks allthe time or in the middle of
town that then sort of createthese opportunities for us to go

(43:57):
diving freshwater cave divingthroughout the whole region. So
it's Australia's most extensivefreshwater cast system. And it's
probably the highest proportionof little holes, little areas.
It's it's a strange, it'srealistically it's Australia's
cave diving sort of hub. It'sthe capital for cave diving in

(44:19):
the whole region.

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely definitely. And let's
start let's have a little lookat a little look. Let's have a
good look at this this dive thathas led to you you know, find
him find him okay. Yeah, well,effectively. It's a it's a is it

(44:42):
a completely new covert? It'sjust a it's an extension.

Yeah, so the the short version is angle breaks
cave is right in the centre ofMount Gambier. Literally Jubilee
Highway, which runs through themiddle of town is right next to
it. There's a little cafe thatsits on the top of this cave
opening. And for divers, we talkabout angle bricks east and
angle bricks West. It's acentral Boleyn. And like I said,

(45:06):
the cafe sits on the top of thedoline. And people go down and
they go for a little bit of adrive tour and see all sorts of
different weird and wonderfulthings. The divers carry their
gear gear down to the water, andyou can either go east or west,
people who've been diving bothsides for the last probably 3040
years, the western side hasalways been more extensive. So

(45:27):
it's a bit more complicated.
It's a it's a level three, it'sadvanced cave. And you've got to
squeeze through this little holeat the start, swim for 7080
metres that pops up into an airchamber and you can get out
climb over the air chamber andthere's a series of tunnels that
run off from that as well. Ifpeople make the effort to go and
dive at angle bricks, theygenerally advanced cave divers

(45:49):
and they generally go into Westbecause it's much more
extensive. East has always beenconsidered a bit of a puddle. So
you crawl you walk down thisarea, get to the water, climb
into the water, there's maybe 30metres of passage at the most.
We've We've joked about it quitea bit recently that people could
pretty much free diver if theywanted to, they could free dive

(46:11):
through. There's another airchamber on the other side with
quite a large rock pile. There'sa bit of a side passage or what
round one little area butrealistically, there's maybe 40
metres of passage in engelbergseats. It has been a place where
a lot of Level Two cave divershave gone because there's only

(46:32):
rated for cave, or it was onlyrated for cave levels. So quite
a few cave divers would go tothe effort of carrying all their
gear down there, go and do this30 metre swim, muck around for a
little bit and then come backand log one of the 25 divers
that they need to log as K rateddivers before they can move up
to advanced. But generally, it'sa one dive and done. Yeah, I did

(46:54):
my level two course in August2019. And before we went down to
angle Brexit just before we wentand jumped in there mate of mine
and I, we both recentlycertified, chatted to a another
diver who sort of mentioned thatthere was a bit of a puddle at
one end. So once you pop up intothe surface, this is huge rock

(47:17):
pile. But if you go and scrambleover the whole rock pile, climb
up a series of rocks and climbdown into a hole, you'll find
that there's a bit of a pullbackthere. So we're like, let's go
and check it out. Technically,we probably weren't qualified
like we will get technicallywe're entering a second sub, we
might have been breaking a fewrules here and there. But it
didn't feel seem like much of abig problem. And I know the

(47:41):
rules have changed since then.
So it wasn't it's not a problemnow, but at the time, we were
sort of like, Oh, we're not sureif we're doing the right thing
here. We climbed over all theserocks carrying cylinders. It's
like this is deeply unpleasant,climbed down into this hole,
I've got into a war andrealistically the puddle that we

(48:01):
got into would probably be aboutthe size of my office here. So
maybe, I don't know, maybe fiveor six metres wide and maybe
sort of eight, nine metres long.
And probably only two or threemetres deep. We jumped in there
went Yep, this is a bit of anadventure swam around. And as
we're swimming around, I I'dread a little bit about how some

(48:23):
of the caves on the Nullarborhad been sort of extensions had
been found by people looking atholes in the roof. So rather
than looking down for leads andlooking sideways for leads
looking up, and so I sort ofshine my light up and it bounced
off a reflection, suddenly sawthis mirror, bounce off the
roof. I'm like what the hell isthat swam over to her, and it

(48:45):
was a surface. So we popped up,put her head through and shone a
light and climbed up onto thissort of this beachy type area
and shone a light through couldsee beyond that there was a
muddy room and there was a bitmore water in one corner and a
few other things. It was anasty, dry squeeze, like it was
ugly to go through there. So wesort of had a look. We're in dry

(49:05):
suits and went, you know what,this is enough adventure for
today. Let's go. But I got a beein my bonnet about it. I sort of
went now there's something elseback there. And Maddie and I
sort of went back a few dayslater we took wetsuits, we went
back to the same place squeezedthrough, got into this muddy
room at the back. There wasquite a large puddle in one

(49:27):
corner. And I sort of looked atit and went I'm gonna go through
that, put the gear back on,wriggled through this ugly, ugly
hole and popped up and foundessentially a series of sumps on
the other side and went holycrap. This is amazing. Like
we've definitely found somethingbizarre back here like I don't
know, this is not on the maps.

(49:48):
This is very new. We don't knowwhat this is very, very cool. It
was what December 2019. Mattended up getting a job with the
Antarctic Division so He'sactually down in Antarctica has
been down in Antarctica for thelast 15 months. I've kept going
with the diving but obviouslyCOVID has happened a bunch of
different things happen. So itwasn't realistically until

(50:10):
maybe, or mid 2020 that Iactually got back in there to
have a second look and have alook at it properly. I'd gone
through a pool. So once we'vegone through that ugly little
hole, there was a pool on theother side. And I sort of went,
Oh, this is pretty cool. There'sanother pool back here. Didn't
give it a whole lot of thoughtbecause I thought I know there's

(50:31):
a series of sumps let's keepfollowing the sumps. And when I
got back in May 2020, I kind ofdislodged a bit of silt, I
dragged my fin through adislodged a bit of silt, and I
just laid on the surface of thislake and watch the silt roll
down and went, Oh, that's reallypretty. And as I'm watching the
silt rolling down this hill,suddenly it whips away to the
right hand side and completelythe wrong direction. And I'll go

(50:54):
Ward is that and I've swum downand essentially found the start
of what we now know is the anglebreaks extension. So it was the
start of Yeah, so far, we'velaid a bit over 400 metres of
line in the new tunnel, and itjust keeps going. Like it just
keeps extending in all differentdirections. The cave is
completely hooked back around onitself. We talked about Engel

(51:17):
bricks East so it's heading youknow, on a South East line, but
this thing is actually hookedall the way back to go west
again. There's a branch thatthen heads almost directly south
like and it breaks off in twodifferent directions. Like
there's Yeah, it's a spider web.
We always knew there was aspiderweb network of caves under
Mount Gambier. We just weren'texpecting it to be at the back
of this crappy little puddlethat people have been ignoring

(51:38):
for last 40 years. So it's, it'spretty exciting to be involved
in this definitely more to bediscovered. The logistics of
getting there as the challengefor a lot of people carrying
gear over rock piles draggingthings in. It feels like more of
a Nullarbor dive than it does anormal Mac Gambia dive normally
Mount Gambier, you pull upsomewhere, put your gear on, get

(52:01):
in the water, go for a dive.
This is put your gear on, dragit down seven flights of stairs,
go through some water, drag itover a 70 metre rock pile, get
into some more water, drag itthrough more dry cave, drag it
through a god awful hole thatI've had a friend nearly drown
in to then then start the dive.
So the logistics of getting inthere as is hard and quite

(52:26):
dangerous at times have beenquite dangerous at times. But
we've it's certainly a lot saferthan it used to be. Just from
traffic, people actually goingin and out of there. It's sort
of smoothed off some of thosereally jagged rocks, and it's
made it a lot safer. But it'sstill very difficult to get in
there. It's not a cave, that'sgonna get a lot of traffic, but
it's probably the most excitingarea of development that we've

(52:49):
got in Mac Gambia and have hadfor a long time.

And you say it's, you know, it's quite
restrictive. I'm assuming thatsomeone my size, it would
probably be a no no.

It depends so it's interesting. We we've had a
few different folks at differentsizes go through okay, I've got
a mate who is recently becomeadvanced cave. So they've
they've changed the rating forthe cave, the the entrance part,
the part that everyone has knownabout for years and years
remains level two remains caverated, but the extension has

(53:23):
been made level three. And it'sgoing to be interesting. We've
got a mate coming back hopefullysoon. He's just done his level
three courses advanced cavecourse. And he's huge like
Dave's Dave's a big boys sixfoot two. He's not he's not
heavy. He's not fat. Let's saythat. He is He works out like

(53:44):
he's a big lad. I will be veryinterested to see how Dave goes
getting through that hole. Thebiggest thing that we've noticed
with it, it's it's been mademore difficult going in and out
of there by carrying cylinders.
Me being a little gremlin theway that I am. I've just been
going straight through so I'vekept my rig on I've kept my
cylinders on and I've likehassled through I've had a mate

(54:06):
who's a bit tall and he still isvery lean. He's tried to squeeze
through with these cylinders onfeet first and he's the one that
we ended up holding his head outof the water there's a puddle of
water that he nearly got himselfstuck in. So taking cylinders
off makes that whole process alot easier and safer. And that's
the big thing that we'reencouraging people to do now

(54:28):
anytime they go and do it don'tdo what I do on the videos take
the cylinders off wrigglethrough and then as a team pass
the cylinders through it's justI know that particular
restriction well enough and I'msmall enough that I can just
rego through with the cylinderstill on but pretty much every
one that goes through now we getthem to take them off.

Yeah, and this whole process you know when once
you found it did you apart fromthe obvious LH And that would be
going on? Did you decide to keepit a bit of a secret? Or were
you kind of jump out the hole?
Again? I guess? Well, we've

got, we had to be careful. I'm a very open, open
kind of person, like I want to,when I find anything I want to
share anything I'm excitedabout, I desperately want to
share it. We had to be reallycareful, primarily because the
site was cave rated. But thepart that we'd found that it was

(55:26):
level two rated, the sectionthat we'd found was advanced
sidemount like it was, therewere areas in there that were
incredibly tight. For muchfurther into the cave, there's a
there's a restriction that wecall the dormouse. And there's
literally two of us that haveever been through it. And it's

(55:46):
me and Ryan cash kowski andRyan's like world renowned cave
Explorer, and Ryan has turnedaround me and gone make that
thing's a bit tight. Like, yeah,it's a pretty, it is a very ugly
restriction. And there's othersthrough the whole area that
yeah, they they feel unstable,or they feel very complex,

(56:08):
there's some there's some reallynasty restrictions through it.
So what we've discovered,definitely an advanced cave,
also complicated by the sort ofthe cave diving politics in the
this is in the middle of town,it's not just some hole out in
the Nullarbor somewhere that,you know, folks from different
places can get approval to it'sliterally under the streets of

(56:29):
Mount Gambia. So it was quite acomplex kind of political
situation for the cave diversAssociation, in particular, of
how do we navigate this? How dowe negotiate with Matt, Gambia
City Council? How do we navigatewith the cafe owner? How do we
navigate with all thesedifferent parties, because we've
made this major discovery in acave that folks had been sort of

(56:53):
realistically ignoring for last40 years. So I didn't want to
keep it secret. I also had tomake sure that I didn't sort of,
in the process upset the wrongpeople. I'm, I'm a newbie, I'm a
new guy like, and to have a newguy come in and suddenly find
this big new cave was definitelygoing to upset a few folks. So I

(57:17):
had to tread really carefullythere for quite a long time. So
even though we made these sortof major discoveries back, sort
of, you know, early 2021, mid2021. It's only just recently it
was only at the cave diversAssociation AGM November 5, that
we actually went public with it.
i For folks who came along to OzTech, I gave him a teaser of it,

(57:38):
I gave him quite a substantialteaser, and any cave diver that
has dived angle breaks, I knewexactly where we were. But I
didn't name it. Because I'd sortof I'd made a promise that we
would keep it under wraps sothat we could control the
information and the CDA couldput in control measures to make
sure that inexperienced diversdidn't go and try and attempt

(58:00):
this thing. There were a coupleof folks we were particularly
concerned about who very, verytalented, dry cavers, very
talented and very experienced ina lot different areas, but not
necessarily experienced cavedivers. And there was a real
concern that some of those folkswould have one look at the dry

(58:20):
cave section and go, that'seasy, we will knock that out and
then get themselves in somereally dangerous trouble later
on underwater. And yet, theinformation hadn't been shared
effectively. Rescue planshaven't been put in place.
There's all these differentthings that we needed to put in
place to try and protect people.

(58:43):
So yeah, I had to stay cageyabout it for quite a long time,
which I hated. But it's lovely.
It's wonderful to now be able toshare it with people and
encourage people to go therefolks who are qualified to do
it, go there and find more stuffbecause there's more cave to be
found. It's not my cave at all.
It's super exciting that otherfolks are going in there and
looking themselves.

Well, it's not your code, but I think it's quite
safe to say that your namestamped.

Yeah, I think there's going to be some sort of
association and the but again, abit like the mouse stuff. That's
not my thing. I don't care aboutmy name going down in in history
books or anything like that. Icare about us discovering more
cool stuff. So I'm much moreexcited about the discoveries
that have come that will comefrom the angle Brexit extension
when other people go in thereand find more stuff. I still

(59:33):
really strongly believe thatthere's more tunnels to be found
and that tunnel will potentiallyconnect up to a cave that's
right in the centre of town likeright next to the library, the
cave Gardens, which is about akilometre away from Engel bricks
on a South East Line. I stillstrongly suspect that those two
caves are connected. So I wouldlove for someone to come along

(59:56):
and prove that right to go andfind the connection between the
two

Matt Waters (01:00:00):
Well, I think Stephen Fordyce might listen. If
he's not been there already.

Josh Richards (01:00:07):
He tends to go a lot colder. Wow. I shouldn't say
a lot colder. Fordyce was herenot that long ago actually we
had a good chat about survey andall those sort of things. And he
has definitely got his work cutout for him in Tasmania. He's
got so much work down there thathe needs to do. So I'm sure he'd
love to go and check out the theextension. But I know he's Yeah,

(01:00:30):
I know. He's pretty focused downin Tassie.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, how we mentioned previous when
we were talking about thescientific aspects of this find
what's what's, what's the,what's going to come out of
that.

So the big thing, I suppose that came out of all
of this, the initial discovery,talking about me and Maddie
Haysbert going and finding thispuddle, blah, blah. That was one
thing, what was reallyinteresting to come out of all
of it was the survey. So I had abit of time during COVID, to
during 2020 do a bit ofresearch, I couldn't dive these

(01:01:06):
places. But I could look up asmuch information as possible, I
ended up getting myself a surveytool, one of them and emos that
allowed me to start surveyingsome of this stuff. So as soon
as I got back to my Gambia, thatbecame the survey project. So I
started trying to do as muchsurvey as possible. And looking
at angle brex. East wasparticularly interesting,
because I knew about this seriesof sumps, I knew that we'd found
at the end of 2019. And lookingat it, and using the survey

(01:01:31):
data, it became really clearthat what we'd actually found
was a fissure line. So it wassplit, because the whole area
has been lifted by volcanicaction. There's all this fissure
lines that run across it. And inthat particular part of of the
region, all the fissure linesrun sort of SES, they run on
about 140 degrees. So we'dlooked into it. And this angle

(01:01:54):
bricks, fissure that we'd foundwas running once again at 140
degrees. So we were thinking,Okay, we need to push that line
we need to keep following alongthere. And that's why when I
sort of I went back ininitially, I was following the
sumps and kept trying to pursuethis 140 degree line. What I
hadn't realised and it took abit more research and

(01:02:15):
conversations with people likeIan Lewis. We call him cave,
Santis. He's a cave divinggeologist. And he's, yeah, Ian's
incredible, like Louie has beendoing stuff for so long. And
understands the shapes of thecave, so chatting to him.
chatting to him was reallyinteresting to sort of discover,

(01:02:37):
you've got all these lines, butyou've also got cross fractures
that connect them. And if you goand look at something like tank
cave, which is what everyonecomes to now Gambia to dive, you
know, more than eight kilometresof passage, it's got all these
visual lines that you divealong, but there's also cross
fractures that connect thatthose tunnels together. And what
I actually found in Ingo bricks,we found the the initial fissure

(01:02:59):
line, but when I said the SilkRoad the wrong way, it went off
to the right hand side, whatwe'd actually found was across
fracture, and the rooms that wefound from there are still on
that 140 degrees, but they'rerunning parallel to the initial
fracture line that we're on. Sofor me, I suppose out of all of
this, it's come back to thescience backgrounds come back to

(01:03:20):
my physics degree, looking atall this stuff and going, Okay,
what is the cave actually doing?
Don't get too bogged down in thegeology, look at the fracture
lines, look at the overoverreaching patterns, where
should we be checking? And Isuppose trying to apply a bit of
a science to cave explorationrather than, rather than just
sort of going at it willy nilly.

(01:03:43):
I reckon I've got a feeling thatthere's something that there's a
lot of that that happens amongstthe folks who do cave
exploration. And more often thannot, they're not wrong. But it
feels a bit woolly. To me, itfeels like a black art of being
like, oh, you know, someone'swho can sniff out a cave, right?
Or it's like, I worked in, Iworked in the mining industry as

(01:04:05):
a blaster for a while. And therewas a lot of that as well. It's
like, oh, you know, it'sblastings a black art. I was
like, it's not it's literallyphysics like we can, we can
physics this out. And I've kindof come at cave diving in much
the same way. It's like, yes,the cave does unusual,
unexpected things. But there areoverreaching patterns here that

(01:04:26):
we can look for. And if wecollect data, if we create
survey maps, if we look atoverlays, we do all those sort
of things, we can see thoseoverlaying things. My big thing
is about trying to connectcaves, you know, this one is
close to this one. And we knowthat this one goes roughly this
way. So where's the connection?
And where should we be lookingfor a connection between the two
and originally my interest insurvey came from trying to

(01:04:49):
connect pines cave to stingingnettle there. We know that
they're very close to where theyare very, very close to each
other. We know that pines cavegets within about six He metres
of the stinging nettle darling.
So I was trying to find a way toconnect the two, by surveying
them and finding out which leadwe should pursue and all those

(01:05:09):
sorts of things, we stillhaven't found the connection
between the two. But that'swhere the interest started from,
and applying that sort ofscientific approach to it, look
at the data, and then be able tofigure things out, we've made
discoveries in pines cave, notthe ones that we wanted. But
we've made other discoveries inpines cave that people have been
sort of hypothesising, about for2030 years, our we've managed to

(01:05:34):
prove it in a dive, we sort ofwent, Oh, you know, we think the
White Room is connected to thewedge room, let's go and find
out, we survey it. And sureenough, the dots are within half
a metre of each other. So you godown there, find a hole between
the two, and you pass a GoProthrough it, and you prove the
connection between the two. Soit's about I suppose, collecting
data, analysing that data,making theories out of it. And

(01:05:58):
then testing those theories,which is at its heart, it's that
science at its core.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it helps having this this
kind of, I would assume a newset of eyes looking at it, you
know, it's,

it's a really big challenge. Yeah. It's one of the
things that I've chatted to Ryancash kowski, about quite a bit.
He's sort of said, it's nice.
Because I am relatively new.
I've only been out thiscomparatively to other folks.
I've only been at this for threeyears or so. Having fresh eyes
fresh perspective makes a bigdifference. And it's been

(01:06:31):
wonderful diving with someonelike Ryan, who I suppose he
looks at things a particularway. And he, he does things
quite intuitively. And I sort ofgo, Oh, why do you do that? And
he goes, Well, that's, that'sjust what you do. And I sort of
go, Oh, that's not what I do.
And we don't compete with eachother. We run sort of parallel,
and I see things that hedoesn't, and he sees things that

(01:06:53):
I don't. And that's beenwonderful having that sort of
that dual view of certainplaces. Again, Ryan's one of the
Ryan Ryan is the only otherperson that has been to the far
reaches of the Engel brexextension so far. And he's seen
things. And he's seen leads thatI completely missed. And I've
seen other I've followed andlaid line in different areas

(01:07:17):
that he didn't even notice wasthere. So if you've got that
perspective, and again, moreeyes on it, that's why I'm
really excited about otherpeople diving this cave, because
it will mean more eyes, moreperspectives, and more
opportunities for people todiscover more so.

And have you kind of slowed up going in there yet?
Are you still just hanging backin there as often as

I have slowed right back. It was pretty
intense and selling selling theaccommodation was a really big
one for me. So living in thatGambia was a bit much. I had
people staying with me all thetime, wanting me to dive with
them. And I kind of fell intothat mentoring role that I
talked about where I would goand dive with people to develop

(01:08:03):
their skills, and notnecessarily be doing the diets
that I wanted to be doing. Nowthat I've moved up to Adelaide,
I'm getting into different work,I've gone back to study, I'm
doing a few different things.
And it means those times that Ido go down to mount Gambia, they
are much more intense. It's nota we're going to sort of, you
know, do you want to go for adive on and really feel like it.
I'm going to watch such and suchit's like, no, no, we're here

(01:08:25):
for a week. And this is the hitlist. This is where we're going
to go I want to go and check outthis lead. I want to go and do
this. I want to do that. Noteveryone is up for the challenge
of Engel bricks extension. Butfor the folks that I trust that
I do want to do that with, weorganise time. So I'm actually
heading back down in about threewell, it over two weeks to meet

(01:08:50):
up with Martin Slater whomonths, one of the key drivers
for mapping and exploring theextension. Martin and I are
going to meet up, we're mainlyfocused on some other stuff that
we want to check out in tankcave. But we will also go back
to the extension and see ifthere's see if there's some
things that we've missed. Nowthat it's surveyed, and it's

(01:09:13):
been sort of mapped out, Isuppose. We're a little bit
hesitant to go back in, but witha bit of time away from it.
It'll be interesting to sort ofgo you know what I do really
want to go and check out thatlittle thing that was over on
that side. I only looked at itonce. I reckon there might be
something there. And even if wewaste an entire dive following a
lead that goes nowhere, at leastwe can cross that lead off off

(01:09:34):
the list. So yeah, it's madeit's much more robust. Yeah,
yeah.

Okay, and what's the what's the move up to
Adelaide lead into what's what'sgoing on at there?

Ah, well, well, my my partners up here. So Chloe
Reed, who was again key todiscovering angle bricks.
Extension. It's her it's herface that's on the on the ABC
Have a photo

wasn't I might be wrong, but isn't there a video
or YouTube or Facebook orwhatever it was, but there's a
you like laughing your tips offat her trying to come through?

Oh, yes, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So that's I wasdescribing that area before I
sort of said that we, Matt and Icame off a bit of a beach,
squeeze through some dry caveinto a muddy room. So that's
footage of Simon Backman. And Ibeing in that muddy room. And
Chloe squeezing through thatarea into the mud room. And just
off to the left hand side of thescreen is the rabbit hole is

(01:10:33):
that nasty little hole that wetalked about? Yeah, so we shared
a bit of footage. It was a bitof a that was a bit of a taste
tester. We folks knew we were upto something they didn't know
where we're up to it. But theyknew we were up to something and
showing dry cave people in drysuits. But dry cave in Mount
Gambier. That's very uncommon.

(01:10:57):
So that video was interesting afor a laugh to sort of take the
piss out of Chloe, which we alllove. But also an opportunity to
share an area that people didn'trecognise people didn't know.
And see if folks picked up onthe fact that we are in, we're
in dry suits in a dry cavesomewhere that they didn't

(01:11:17):
recognise so but no, Chloe'sChloe is an ICU nurse up here in
Adelaide. And we've been doinglong distance for far, far, far,
far too long. And with the saleof the habitat, it was like not,
this is the easy thing to do. Ihave got a lot of things, I've
got books I want to work on. I'mstudying cybersecurity at the

(01:11:40):
moment, I'm doing a whole raftdifferent things. And Mac Gambia
is not the right place for that.
And we're also five hours closerto the Nullarbor. So I'm not
planning a trip for another fouror five months, we'll probably
look at going out March, April.
But it does cut down the timeconsiderably. And when I've done

(01:12:00):
Nullarbor trips in the past,rather than leaving from out
Gambia, I leave from Mount mountLee from the mount, come up to
the Adelaide up here, stay withChloe for the night, and would
then go on now, I'm already,like I said, five hours closer.
So instead of it being a 24 hourtrip, it's now an 18 hour trip.
So it will make your explorationon Nullabor. A lot easier.

For one for one.
And did you say that you'rewriting books again?

I'm trying to Yeah, so I've got there's
probably half a dozen differentideas brewing in the background.
But there's two or three keyones. I've always wanted to
write a book about at about whypeople think they've been
abducted, why we have like,programmes searching for
extraterrestrial intelligence,the Navy, the US Navy videos

(01:12:53):
that they put out with likethese things buzzing around all
that sort of stuff. Aliensfascinate people. And I suppose
I'm a bit of a scientificstoryteller. That's always been
the way that I present myself.
And so being able to talk aboutthe science and the but not be a
jerk about it. It's kind of Idon't I don't want to be one of

(01:13:14):
those, those sceptics who arelike, Oh, that's nonsense, and
blow everything out of thewater. But I still want to be
able to talk about the realitiesof like, Hey, this is a little
too far out there. This thing'snot realistic because of such
and such. But what about thisother crazy stuff over here?
Hey, isn't this an amazinglycool thing over here instead, so
I don't want to shut down folksstories about being abducted by

(01:13:39):
aliens. But there's Yeah. Andwithout delving into it too
deeply. There's an interestingparallel, Carl Sagan wrote about
this quite a bit in one of hislast books, demon haunted world
talking about how the number ofdemonic possessions that were
reported dropped at the samerate that alien abductions came
up. And it actually comes backto a far more interesting thing

(01:14:02):
talking about sleep paralysisand night terrors. And people
experiencing things like that.
And it feeling like an out ofbody experience. So being able
to write a book about that wouldbe really, really interesting.
I've had that on the cards forquite a few years. And I'd love
to delve into something that'ssort of parallel, I suppose,

(01:14:24):
talking about our relationshipwith reality, our relationship
with death, all those sorts ofthings as well. So yeah, I love
talking about philosophy. And Ilove trying to make it as funny
as possible, while also gettingas many sort of facts in there
as possible.

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like you've got your work
cut out for you.

Oh, yeah. That's a long work list.

Yeah, that's it.
I'm just thinking there's athere's a lady coming on the
show in in the new year. KarenHoffman and she She effectively
take scientific research papersand make sense of them so that
Domestos like myself canunderstand that awesome. Yeah,
maybe I would go with that aswell, while you're doing the
other 6 million.

Yeah, what realistically, that's, that's
what I was always trying to dowith comedy. That was the goal
was to try and take a hardscience and things academic
papers that were weren'taccessible to people and put
them in terms that folks wouldrelate to and and understand one
of my favourite ones, I talkedabout the Drake equation, which

(01:15:34):
is an equation that's used forcalculating the probability that
there's other intelligentcivilizations that we can
communicate with in the MilkyWay. And I basically sort of
spilled the whole thing out andeveryone obviously in the
audience has gotten the what isthat? I went, it's fine, guys.
This is just like Tinder, andbroke it down into like, here's
your search radius, these arethe things these are the

(01:15:56):
attributes that you're lookingfor. This is the age range. And
realistically, the Drakeequation works the same way that
Tinder does. And people couldrelate to that. So that's always
been the challenge for me is totry and make science I suppose
relatable, these things arereally interesting and call. But
people sort of get overwhelmedby the academic language and the

(01:16:18):
the elitism that we see. I couldnever be an academic. I couldn't
fit into a universityenvironment like that, for those
same reasons, but the stuff thatthey're researching and doing is
really, really cool. So why nottry and make it more accessible
for people?

Yeah, good call. I wish you well with that. Thank
you, Josh. It's been absolutelyfantastic talking to you, buddy.
And learning about your crazylife so far. And I look forward
to so much more out of your nopressure, but you know, you've
got

I've set the bar high so far. So thank you so
much for having me on. It's beenan absolute pleasure to talk.

Awesomesauce mate, and, hey, let's speak soon and
have a good Christmas. It's alittle bit early, but you know,
it's just a random, I've orderedthat. So yeah. Thank you. Good
on you mate. And everyone who'slistening, we can throw in
Josh's links in the show notes.
So if you want to find out more,and just head on over there and
hit him up. Thanks forlistening. Bye for now.

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Josh Richards - The Engelbrechts east extension, Mount Gambia

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Josh Richards - The Engelbrechts east extension, Mount Gambia