SHOW / EPISODE

The Shaft: Eight Went Down, Four Came Up

Season 1 | Episode 3
11m | Oct 3, 2026

Near Mount Gambier, South Australia, 28 May 1973. Eight divers descend through a three-foot hole in a paddock into one of the largest flooded chambers in the country, with no guide line and no dive plan. At about 180 feet, four of them keep going. It takes more than ten months to bring the last of them back, and the accident changes cave diving in Australia. Told from the published record.

Chapters

0:00 Torches under the ceiling

0:47 A hole in a paddock

2:18 The party

3:30 The first dive

4:06 One hundred and eighty feet

5:24 What the survivors saw

6:15 Ten months

8:28 The coroner

9:31 What changed

10:48 The Shaft today

Sources

Wikipedia: 1973 Mount Gambier cave diving accident (with its references: W. B. Budd, "Police Diving: The Shaft", Australian Police, 1991; Lewis & Stace, Summary of Cave Diving Deaths in Australia, CDAA, 1977; P. Horne, South Australian Diving Fatalities 1950-1982): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Mount_Gambier_cave_diving_accident

Wikipedia: Cave diving (the five rules; nitrogen narcosis in caves): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_diving

Wikipedia: Nitrogen narcosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis

Full transcript:

https://pub-413c1fc5107e439dbec7a1f1c322ed45.r2.dev/diving/transcripts/ep03.vtt

Caving Stories on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@caving_stories

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Produced by Caving Stories.

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Caving Stories: Cave Diving
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