Karns Creek

The remote camps were organised to accomodate groups of scientists for up to a week. They were provided with breakfast, a packed lunch and a decent dinner at night while they reviewed their days activites.  A dumbo provided hot water for washing and a shower under the southern stars. There were a few canoes for a relaxing paddle along the brilliantly clear water of Karns Creek.

Geology

The underlying geology in the plateau area comprises Proterozoic (1,700  - 1,400 MYA) sandstones and dolomite, containing fossil stromatolites, with extensive cave formations.

Nicholas White, Paul Brooker, Daryl Carr of the Victorian Speleolgy Association noted in 2006 that:

"VSA became aware of caves from cave photographs in promotional material for tourism in this area. Enquiries led to organising an expedition during June 2005 to explore and study the karst. The caves are in the Pre-Cambrian Karns Creek Dolomite (~ 1.3 billion years old) that contains fossil stromatolites. To date we have discovered and explored over 25 caves and features.

Totem Pole Cave (PUN-7) was known to the owners and when surveyed turned out to be over 1 kilometre in length and to contain a maternity colony of ghost bats. Other discoveries followed such as Ballroom Cave (PUN-11), an extensive, well decorated multi-entrance cave with a large population of orange horseshoe bats. The follow-up trip in June 2006 was nearly cancelled because of flooding during the wet season and wet conditions constrained extensive exploration, but resulted in more detailed exploration near Totem Pole Cave. Careful track-marking was done in both Ballroom Cave and Totem Pole Cave to constrain the effects of small tourist parties and to avoid bat roost areas. A lot of biological collecting was undertaken as well as some bat bone collecting to confirm the identity of the bats."

During the RGSQ 2012 exploration the VSA were again resident at the Karns Creek camp continuing their research and kindly invited some RGSQ members along to assist in their work.