Ewen's Ponds Mt.Gambier. dive number 293 with Steve ("Two Tanks") Cooper
Ewan Ponds is popular with divers and snorkelers alike due to its ease of access from Mt. Gambier and its crystal clear waters, which can allow up to 50m visibility, no current and no surge. It was this calling that made Coops and I take the 6 hour trek on Good Friday to see what it was all about.
We left home on Good Friday, just before 6 am with the car already packed the night before and headed west through the grey, drizzly pre-dawn Melbourne sky in hopes of something more like paradise further west. The trip was uneventful, as we all like it, and after one or two coffee stops we arrived at Port MacDonnell, some 25kms south of Mt Gambier. Trying to book a camping site for one night over Easter is no mean feat, especially when everyone is fully booked out but the kind hearted chap at the Foreshore Caravan Park remembered our previous email and set us up on some spare grass in the corner of the park.
Paradise indeed, just need the barbie and the Cab Sav
No better site could one have- just us, two tents, the rolling surf behind us and the stars above. Paradise indeed. We set up camp and organised ourselves then headed off to Ewan’s Ponds, some 20 minutes away.
Ewen's Ponds are a series of three limestone sinkholes in Eight Mile Creek, south of Mt. Gambier. The origonal inhabitants of the land were Aborigines of the "Boandik" tribe, part of the larger "Bunganditj" clan. The first European identified with the area was Thomas Ewen, who discovered the ponds when his dog chased a kangeroo into one of them. The land surrounding the ponds was gradually cleared for agriculture and late a drainage system was built to draw water from the ponds for soldier settlement after World War2. The land is now part of a protetected area.
Each pond is a basin-shaped limestone “doline” (a shallow funnel shaped depression formed by solution of limestone) with the first being some 11 metres deep and connected to the others by shallow watercourses called "races". The beds are covered with a fine silt layer and the floor of the third pond also contains a natural shallow cave.
Ewen's Pond number one
We geared up and went to the small jetty they have set up there and dropped in. The water was crystal clear and a little deceiving as it looked deeper than it really was. We hit the bottom as we went in and I found the rocks a little slippery, almost going over. Coops was a little underweighted so he went off to get some more weights, then we dropped the keys into the pond, then the extra weights....... why do things like this happen when other people are watching? “Yes, we have done this before...”
As the ponds are fresh water, which is less buoyant than salt water, you don’t need as much weight to sink effectively, but as we didn’t do a proper weight check, we just kind of “guesstimated” it, which as always, turned out to be a bad mistake. We pushed off from the jetty and immediately went under. The sight was amazing, clear water like I have never seen before and instantly I could see straight to the bottom some 11 metres down. Visibility was easily 40 to 50 metres in all directions. We swam down the rather steep walls to the bottom, hitting it rather hard as we were obviously over-weighted. The ponds have a very silty bottom some 300-400mmm thick under which is limestone rock. The silt is primarily made up of rotting and decomposed vegetation and swirls upwards in great clouds when it is disturbed. Fortunately it doesn’t take too long to settle. It is also for this reason that the number of divers in the ponds at any one time is limited to six.
vegetation forms on the floor of the first pond
Swimming around above the bottom, had the distinct feeling of being on a film set. The background, some distance away, had that “painted backdrop” look one sees on old films. The silt on the bottom took on varied and strange shapes. The methane given off by the decomposition process is trapped beneath the layers of vegetation and with some added pressure, it pushed the top layer outwards to form strange egg shaped forms - exactly like the eggs in the film “Alien”, but with no nasty critters. Occasionally, a burst of bubbles would rise from the bottom and a small piece of vegetation would rise to the surface, swirling and twisting as it rose. This happened almost constantly at differing parts of the pond.
vegetation and a stream of bubbles rise to the surface
"Alien" egg shaped forms on the floor
In the centre of the pond was a large mound, rising some 5-6 metres upwards. How or why it was there I don’t know at this stage but it was very distinct and easy to swim around. We didn’t see any forms of fish or animal life in the first pond
We had to surface a couple of times to get our bearings and to try and locate the narrow channel which led to the second pond. Even from the surface it wasn’t easy to see amongst the very dense reeds around the pond but we had studied the map beforehand and had an idea of where to go.
We went over to the channel or “race” as it is known which was only two metres or so deep and had a very slight current running which helped us move through comfortably. The current is due to water seeping into the pond from deep underground. As the pond fills, the water overflows via the water race, into the second pond which is also fed by underground springs, hence the current into the third pond is stronger again. The water finally flows out into the “8 Mile Creek”.
cruising through the first water race to Pond 2
The channel was full of reeds and short water weeds, all pointing forward with the constant current. It was a short and easy 50 metre swim to the second pond which came into view with a bluish haze but still with superb visibility. As we approached the end of the race, it dropped off quite quickly to some 6 metres and swimming over the edge and down to the bottom is as close to flying as I think I will ever get.
As with the first pond, there was no life to be seen and being a little smaller and circular in shape, it was easy to sit in the middle and see the entire pond from wall to wall. There was also a few areas where water could actually be seen churning up through the bottom. The chalky limestone powder on the bottom constantly swirled as the water pushed in.
water bubbles in through the rocks amid the limstone
Again we surfaced to get our bearings and it was at this stage I became a little concerned, it was getting late in the day and some stormy weather had passed over as the sky had a yellow light to it. I didn’t fancy getting stuck in the middle of a reed covered pond out in the middle of nowhere if the sun went down. We soon located the next race and dropped down and headed for it.
The current was slightly stronger as it took us through, which seemed to take ages. It is 125 metres long and thick with reeds , underwater grasses and tee-trees.
The third pond was by far the best, schools of fish, fresh water crays bigger than any dinner plate (fortunately for them, this is a no-take zone). There are a couple of overhangs, or shallow caves which we went into as far as we could but other than a rather large cray, there was nothing else in there. Again on the floor were several areas where water could be seen swirling in through the porous limestone.
At the side of the central area, there is a fissure in the floor, which is only big enough to get your arm in but is several metres long. i couldnt see anything in it just more wet rocks but was certainly interesting.
fissure in the floor
We swam around for a short time then headed up the sheer wall to the exit ladder onto the small jetty. Getting through the ladder with twins on was no mean feat and looked somewhat comical as I twisted through on my hands and knees.
The only trouble with a swim like this is the long walk back, some 200-300 metres and fully kitted up, it makes for an interesting trip –and a few choice words.
just a great place to be
Great dive and I would have been happy to have driven the entire 400 kms or so just to have done that one dive. To dive in a pond in the middle of nowhere, to see rocks and life forms I’ve never seen before, springs bubbling up through the bottom, to slither through channels like a fat snake, push curtains of reeds aside to sneak though – and of course, crystal clear water with visibility the likes of which I have never imagined. Truly it was worth the trip just for that.
But we did more................... a volcanic crater beckoned........
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