Snorkelling The Sinkholes Of The Limestone Coast.
Usually when you hear about a sinkhole, it’s because some poor bastard has driven his car into one that’s opened up in the middle of the road. Or you’re watching a movie where the sinkhole will take you through to another dimension – which would, to be fair, be pretty awesome.
The sinkholes of The Limestone Coast in South Australia’s south east are a whole different beast. There’s no portal to another dimension that we know of, but maybe we just didn’t duck dive deep enough? They’re also nothing like the ones those suckers drive their cars into. Which is definitely a good thing.
In an effort to give you the ultimate guide to sinkhole snorkelling, we donned extremely unflattering wetsuits, and hit the region’s three main sinkholes in four days. The weather was a bit shit and the water was freezing, but nothing was going to prevent us from getting to the bottom of which one was best, so here’s what we found out.
Piccaninnie Ponds.
First stop was Piccaninnie Ponds, about 30kms out of Mt Gambier, which is the most logical place to hub out of for your sinkholes adventures. The pond is in Piccaninnie Ponds Conservation Park and is fed by freshwater springs. You can cave dive here, but we were way too chicken shit for that, so this is purely a snorkel review. You’ll need to go online and book your spot, and it’s $15.50 per snorkeller for an hour. You can book two sessions, including two in a row, but honestly, we’re not sure what you’d do in there for longer than an hour other than freeze to death, unless you have a waterproof set of Uno cards. You’ll also need to take a buddy, not to play cards with, that part’s optional, but to snorkel with you as it’s a safety requirement that you go in pairs. A maximum of four people per group is allowed and a total of eight people per hour. That’s a bit weird, because I think you could probably just go as a group of eight and pretend you didn’t know the other four people if they asked, but what would we know? We didn’t make the rules, we’re just telling you what they are.
When you book, you’ll also be asked to complete and submit an indemnity form. This is your standard ‘If I die it’s my own fault’, and makes the rest of the rules as crystal clear as the water you’ll be jumping into. Full wetsuit, fins, mask and snorkel are mandatory and no weight belts are the main ones. You might think you’re tough and can go for a splash in your Speedos but you’d be very fucking wrong. Regardless of how warm it is outside the water temp sits between 10c and 15c and holy shit that’s cold if you’re just floating around. We used 5mm wetsuits and some additional mm of body fat, and were only just comfortable enough to make it through our hour.
You can also cave dive The Chasm (100m deep) and The Cathedral (an enclosed area) if you have a fancy cave diving permit, but no thanks. We saw what happened to those kids in Thailand so we’ll stay bobbing around on the surface thanks very much.
The bottom of the pond itself isn’t exactly picturesque, but the edges are epic. The water is so clear there’s quite a bit of plant life growing under the water and it’s magical. We went on a dull day and visibility was still amazing, but ideally you want to go on a sunny day. It’s a way better experience both in the water, and when you get out and want to defrost.
There’s supposed to be fish and eels in the pond, but we basically saw sweet fuck all.
The car park is about 50m walk to the pond, and there’s a dunny there and a small paved changing area which is very thoughtful of them. Saves you getting dirt and gravel in your wetsuit and on your face, when you’re rolling around on the ground trying to take it off like a magician trying to escape a straight jacket. Or maybe that’s just us, because… wetsuits.
You used to be able to camp there, you can’t any more. So don’t.
This sinkhole is good for easy access, there’s a nice platform to jump in from, and no weird scary bits. If you’re not a confident snorkeler, you can just swim around the main pond and look at the cool plants around the edges. Easy access. Low cost. Beautiful.
One thing of note, make sure you read and understand the ‘where you can and can’t go map’ before you go in. Otherwise you may find yourself in one of the ‘can’t go’ bits where it gets shallow and you’ll be thrashing around stuffing everything up and trust us, you do not want to do that.
Kilsby Sinkhole.
Next up for us was Kilsby Sinkhole. This one’s a whole different kettle of fish, just without the kettle. Or the fish. Unlike Piccaninnie, this one’s on private land which means you can kiss way more than your $15 goodbye. Going for a splash here as a snorkeler will cost you $69 for two hours. On the upside, that includes all your gear and a person to jump in with you and make sure you don’t die. So if you’re a beginner and don’t have your own wetsuit, this is a pretty good option. There’s a great history to the place which has to do with military secret weapon testing, and we could tell you all about it, but then we’d have to kill you. So we’ll let them do that. (The telling not the killing. That bit’s a joke.)
The two hours includes getting your gear, hearing a bit about the history, walking down a few stairs, then getting out again, so your water time is closer to an hour and again, that’s probably more than enough time to do a few laps of what is actually a relatively small-pond. There’s not as much greenery as Piccaninnie, but the freezing cold (about 13-16c) water clarity is crazy clear and if there’s divers in there, just watching their fart bubbles come up from way down below is mesmerising. Even if there’s no divers, the shafts of light that come through are pretty amazing. On the day we were there, the weather was a bit overcast, but when the sun did come out, it was pretty epic.
Unlike Piccaninnie, which is completely open, this pond is surrounded by rock, and there’s even a cool cavey kind of bit you can snorkel into. Not under water, but under a rocky roof. They released a turtle in there, (no idea if it’s still there, or even if it was there when we were because we certainly saw a grand total of fuck all turtles. We did see a couple of swallows nesting, otherwise it’s crystal clear water. And maybe a turtle. Also, gin. That’s right, they now make their own gin from the crystal clear water. Tastings are coming soon. You can try tasting the water they make it with, but it’s really not the same. That pretty much tastes like regular water, with a twist of turtle piss.
Kilsby Sinkhole is about 15kms out of Mt Gambier, there’s toilets/change rooms there. You do need to go down a few stairs, but nothing too physical. This is a really good option for people who need gear and someone to keep an eye on them. Groups are limited to eight people so it won’t be jam packed.
You can also scuba here, but access to the cavern section is only for people with super duper creds. If you can’t be arsed getting wet but want to check it out and learn all about it still, it’s $12.50 for a tour.
Ewen Ponds.
You used to be able to just rock up and go for a snorkel at Ewen Ponds but you can’t anymore, so don’t do that. Go online and book like you’re supposed to. It’s only $15.50 each, and trust us, out of the three places we went, this is easily the best one if you’ve got your own gear and aren’t a scaredy cat. Like Piccaninnie you need to go with a buddy, book an hour, up to two, and there’s a maximum of four people per group. You need a wetsuit, fins, mask and snorkel – which, let’s be honest, is always handy if you’re going snorkelling.
Like the others, the water is freezing. Going on a warm or hot day won’t make the water any warmer, but it will mean you’ll defrost nicely when you get out. It will also mean that while you’re less likely to die from hypothermia, you’ll have a much higher probability of dying walking down ‘snake alley’ to get back to the car park. Seriously, it’s snake-a-rama through that long grass and even though we didn’t need to wash our wetsuits because it was in fresh water and not salt water, we did have to rinse the skid marks off after one of our group bent down to point to a tail sticking out of the grass and say how it looked like it was probably a snake. While none of us are ‘Steve Irwin’ might we also suggest not doing that? If you see a tail sticking out, there’s every chance you want to be further away, rather than closer.
But back to the ponds. These ponds are ten out of ten. It’s a series of three ponds joined together by two water channels. The ponds themselves are lovely. Crystal clear water. Lots of underwater plants. Light rays for days. But the channels that join them are ‘holy shit’ level amazing. The first one’s maybe 50m long and the second one between pond two and three is 125m long and holy shit, did we mention they are amazing? Because holy shit, they are. They’re only about 2m deep, and there’s a relatively strong current, so just line yourself up at the top of the channel and float through. It’s basically like flying through an underwater garden. And we know we’ve mixed flying through the air with being underwater, but work with us on this.
There’s supposed to be fish in the ponds and we saw a bunch of teeny tiny ones, and also quite a big one. Also, leeches. And we really hate leeches. But we would snorkel there again in a heart beat because we like this place more than we hate leeches, and that’s saying something.
There’s a dunny at the car park and the entry point to pond one is only about 50metres away. You can only snorkel in one direction, (with the water flow), and the walk back to the car from pond three takes a few minutes. There is no exit from pond two. Once you’re on your way from pond one, the only way out is to keep on keeping on.
We know it’s a cliche to say “oh man, words don’t describe it how beautiful it is, but, ah, they don’t. The pictures don’t do a bad job, but even they don’t really do it justice. When we talk about adventures in Australia, waterfalls get a pretty good wrap. We know there are some swimming holes up north and a few pink lakes around the place that get their fair share of instaglory. And we guess the (used to be) Great Barrier Reef is still ok in parts. Ningaloo is cracking as well. Been there. Highly recommend it. But how sinkhole snorkelling on the Limestone Coast has remained mostly under the radar is beyond us. OK, sure it’s bloody freezing. And yes, it’s in South Australia and everyone seems to think South Australia is crap because they’d be wrong, but this is one of those things you’d go do somewhere else in the world and rave about for ages.
Other things worth knowing.
A few sidenotes for your trip: First of all, we also wore gloves, boots and hoods when we snorkelled. Partly because we’re a bit soft, and partly because 10-15c water really takes the fun out of it when you can no longer feel your face.
If you don’t have your own wetsuit gear, you can hire some from Allendale East General Store. They can also help arrange tours to all these places if you don’t want to do them on your own or are a bit of a loser and don’t have any friends. If you’re really ambitious you could try a 3mm wetsuit, but you’d be borderline so we’d go 5mm or 7mm for sure.
Ewen Ponds definitely closes for a while every year (usually Sept 1 to Dec 1) to allow for the pond to recover from all us humans smashing around in there, and the absolute best time to go is when it first opens again, and everything is shiny and new!
Mt Gambier is a great place to stay. There’s other towns around, but Mt Gambier is probably the biggest and you can see other stuff while you’re in the neighbourhood. More sinkholes, the Blue Lake, Naracoorte Caves, Tantanoola Caves, Some other caves, the Glenelg River and The Big Lobster in nearby Kingston.
