Crystal Clear Sinkholes that Should Not Exist!

What are you doing in a paddock, Adam? Just going to explore some ponds. What? Out here? Out here you say? I don't believe you. My name's Adam. I'm an Australian freediving champion, but because of COVID I can't compete. So while we're waiting for the world to open up again me and my wife Erin and our daughter Ellie are going on a freediving road trip around Australia. We're going to be living out of our tent and diving everywhere. So subscribe to follow the journey and a huge thanks to our patrons for making this all possible. Good morning freediving family! I'm here in Mount Gambier again and today we're going to explore some crystal clear swimming ponds. We're going to Ewan's Ponds today and I think, honestly, Mount Gambier is one of the most incredible diving locations on Earth. You just cruise through all this farmland, this pasture land, it's just paddock, paddock, paddock, paddock, and spotted around the whole area is just incredible, incredible sinkholes. It's really a magical, magical spot. So yeah, let's go and check out these ponds. Ewan's Ponds. So this area is called the Limestone Coast. All the bedrock here and all the ground here is made out of limestone. They're not like built. They've literally just cleared the dirt away. So this is Ewan's Ponds and it's like, when you look at it from here, it kind of looks like this like terrible, I don't know, weird, swamp, but wait till you see what it looks like inside. I don't like sharing with scuba divers. You better leave. Leave now. And then you're like, Ewan, get rid of them. Get rid of them, Ewan. I don't know how to. This is our pond. Look at that, you can see the bottom, you can see all the reeds. Oh, you know, maybe it's crystal clear in there. So a few things to know when diving in this wonderland. You are not allowed to wear a weight belt or weights of any kind. And you're not allowed to wear long freediving fins. So all the dives we're doing are with our little pool fins and without any weight to assist us in getting down. The thing that gets me about Ewan's ponds is the really bright colours. Those really bright greens set amongst those really bright blues and the spots of bright limestone everywhere. It's just one of the prettiest places I've ever been. The ponds are fed with spring water that comes through the ground. And you can see here, here's a little section where it's bubbling up through the sand. I wanted to shoot a little Instagram reel using Bella flipping around in circles in the middle of the pond. But because she was so buoyant, because she was wearing a 5mm wetsuit with no weight on, we just couldn't get her spinning effortlessly. But I did actually come back here another day and get someone to shoot a version of me doing this. And look how graceful I am. Oh my god. The clarity is just unreal. It's just nuts. I have no idea why the water is so clear here. It's just so, so stunning. And the colours, you know what I mean? Like the greens and the blues and the whites. I'm about to go and swim through the channel which will take me to the next pond. Through the channel, there's actually a bit of current and so all you do is you just relax and float and the current takes you down this channel through the reeds to the next pond. It's really cool. The second pond isn't as interesting or as deep as the first pond but we found some very cool little fish swimming around which was cool. I suppose I just didn't imagine there would be I don't know, an abundance of fish in this area. It just felt too unreal, too prehistoric to see little animals like that. Nice! So this is the second pond. It's not as like sexy as the first pond but it's still very cool. Alright, so I'm going to go through the channel to the third pond now. So, time for a little ride. The third pond gets interesting again because there's this little rocky cave right in the middle of it and there's this exposed limestone floor and so those white colours just pop out at you. And in the ponds there are yabbies. In my last video people were asking me what's a yabbie? So a yabbie is a little freshwater lobster type thing and this one is a glenelg spiny crayfish. They're a protected species so no touching, no taking, no eating just looking. Yeah, that was the third pond. I totally forgot to film, you know, me getting out and all that jazz but that's okay. You don't need to see me stepping out of the pond. Here I am, walking back to the car. We're going to go and check out Piccaninny Ponds now. It's absolutely stunning and crystal clear water as well. When I was here last I didn't really get a really good chance to properly explore it so I'm keen to do it properly this time. Alright, now I'm all toasty warm in the car and we're heading to Piccaninny Ponds nearby. Get like 10-15 minutes of being warm and it's time to get cold again. Alright, so this is Piccaninny Ponds and just like Ewan's, from the top it looks like a swamp. It's amazing and crystal clear underneath, I promise. So we have a special guest here. This is Aunt Williams. Aunt Williams, besides being a 100m diver herself, is also the deepest human under ice. So this is the ice diver himself. What do you do under ice? It's a crazy experience because it's just so dark, you know. I mean, water's water, it's the same sort of dive, but so dark and so cold, it's just foreboding. Yeah, 100%. It's what makes it fun. Yeah. So anyway, Aunt's going to go in the water to say any speedos because he doesn't feel the cold. Oh, hello little eel. There's a lot more algae in general floating around Piccaninny Ponds but that's also kind of what makes it so special. Look at all of this algae just dripping and draping off all the sides of the pond and the structure. It is like an alien planet. Being in this place is like being on another world. Also, in case you were wondering how we were able to dive down to the bottom of these ponds constantly while wearing thick wetsuits and no weight, it is with exhales. I don't recommend diving on exhale in general, but we just had to otherwise we couldn't get down. So as soon as you jump in the ponds, you come to this big open pool section and that just continues on for as far as wetland goes, but over this way is a crack. This chasm is over 100 meters deep and it goes down in kind of like a zigzag, so it's not just like a straight descent down to the bottom and it is just insane! ... Away from the chasm, the wetland just kind of goes on and on and on in these beautiful picturesque ponds and swimming channels and things like that. It was really, really lovely. I actually couldn't find any information about how the traditional owners of the land used this pond or used these waterways. No information whatsoever, which, I don't know, maybe they didn't use it at all? Maybe there's no real connection with this part of the land? Or maybe it's really sad that we don't know? But if you do know, please let me know because I would love to know! What a magic spot! Honestly, I cannot believe this is just sitting here in Australia, just this random little swampy wetland. Oh, hi Matt and Sunny! This random little swampy wetland thing, and then there's just magic, like absolute magic under the water. That chasm, slash crack, is just phenomenal. Out of this world. Anyway, I'm buggered now. We're going to head back to the jail. I'm going to show you the jail when I get back there. The place where we're staying is really, really cool. So this is the accommodation that we've been staying at for the past two weeks. It's the old Mount Gambier Jail. So literally the old jail was converted into a hotel. It's phenomenal. See these? These are rooms. You see this? This is like the old courtyard, the old exercise yard. It's like this incredible, old, old structure that the owners have done a spectacular job of converting into a really nice hotel. I'm just going to take you around it. I'm always amazed when I come here. It's just a phenomenal place. Here's the other outlook. More cells. More cells with your rooms. This is our little function area, if you ever want to use it. Here, look. This is the big exercise yard. Look at this. We do our workshops out here. We do a lot of stuff out here. Once again, more rooms. These are really nice rooms inside. It's a cell, but it's been converted into a really nice room. I know I've made a video before where I showed you around the jail, but I kind of just wanted to do it again because I always lose my mind when I come here. Look at these. This is the front. This is the door how you get in. Look at that. I'm going to turn around. You're going to see the big entrance. Bang. That's where you come in on. What a place. We were not done for the day. It's so incredible here. We were not dived out. Hey, guys. We're back at Ewan's Ponds, and we're going to go for a night dive. I reckon it's going to be bloody sick. Apparently, there are a lot of eels that come out at night, so we'll see if we can find them. I've just never gone night diving in a place that's got unlimited visibility. Why am I stumbling? I keep falling over things. Unlimited visibility, no sharks, only eels. Let's go and do that. Let's go suit up. By the way, this is Colin a.k.a. The Silver Fox. Colin teaches a lot of our free diving courses in Sydney, which are happening every single weekend. Every weekend. We have a free diving course in Sydney, so if you're keen to learn how to free dive in Sydney, flick us an email. I'll put the links, descriptions, website, all that jazz down below. It's really, really cold, and my wetsuit's really wet. This is not fun. Music Alright, so what did I learn about night diving in a place with unlimited visibility? Well, black is still black. Even if the vis is amazing, if it's not lit up, you can't see much. Music We spotted our first eel, and there it was, just sitting there out in the open. Now, these are short-finned river eels. If you remember, a few episodes back I went diving with long-finned river eels. They kind of look fairly similar. They're a fairly similar species. Both the short-finned and the long-finned river eel are found all over NSW in this part of Australia, and I think they're both really cute. Now, for whatever reason, at night time, there were these chunks of moss or algae or whatever this is detaching from the bottom and floating up to the surface, and I wonder if it's because the eels are more active at night, and they're hiding amongst the algae, and they're dislodging it, or, I don't know, maybe it's something magic. So it was time to go through the channel to the next pond. And this actually, like, felt a little bit scary. It was just, you know, a very enclosed little space with lots of reeds around. I was like, oh, what's going on around me? Music We found another eel. So yes, they definitely do come out at night. They just pop on out and sit on the floor. And you can see here again, this is the spring water coming up through the ground into the ponds. Pretty amazing. We spotted a few other species of fish. No big fish or anything, just little friendly critters here and there. And this is the silver fox himself, exploring the cave at night time. Thanks so much for watching, guys. Don't forget to subscribe by pressing this little circular thing down here. Also, check out this video. Or you might want to check out this video, because you might like it too. Music