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Murray Cave is an almost horizontal former outflow cave, which is now on the brink of inactivity. A heavily decorated upper branch functioned during the first outflow phase and the present inactive entrance succeeded it as the outlet point. Both are at the level of a low aggradational terrace of the North Branch of Cave Creek outside the cave; this probably belongs to a Pleistocene cold period. An undecorated lower branch provided the third phase outlet, which still functions occasionally when water rises up a water trap at the inner end of the main passage and flows along that passage into it. The entrance chamber has angular gravel fill due to frost shattering, which post-dates the development of the lower branch passage and belongs to a late Pleistocene cold period. Evidence of free surface stream action predominates in the cave but shallow phreatic conditions must have contributed to its development.
Kitava is the most easterly island of the Trobriand group. It is an uplifted coral atoll, oval in plan, with a maximum diameter of 4 1/2 miles. The centre of the island is swampy and surrounded by a rim that reaches a height of 142 m. Caves occur in various parts of the rim and several have been described in a previous article (Ollier and Holdsworth, 1970). One of the caves, Inakebu, is especially important as it contains the first recorded cave drawings from the Trobriand Islands. Inakebu is situated on the inner edge of the island rim at the north-eastern end of the island. Map 1 shows the location of the cave on Kitava Island. Map 2 is a plan of the cave, surveyed by C.D. Ollier and G. Heers. The location of the cave drawings is shown on the plan. Inakebu is a "bwala", that is a place where the original ancestor of a sub-clan or dala is thought to have emerged from the ground. The bwala tradition is common throughout the Trobriands and neighbouring islands. It has been described by many writers on the anthropology of the area, and was summarised in Ollier and Holdsworth (1969). The people believe that if they enter such places they will become sick and die. Until November, 1968, no member of the present native population had been in the cave, though there is a rumour that a European had entered it about 20 years before, but turned back owing to lack of kerosene. It must be admitted that this tale sounds rather like the stories one hears in Australia that Aborigines were afraid of the dark caves and therefore did not go into them. In fact, the many discoveries in the Nullarbor Plain caves show that they did, and the cave drawings in Inakebu show that someone has been in this cave. The point is that it does not seem to be the present generations who entered the caves but earlier ones; people from "time before" as they say in New Guinea. The first known European to enter the cave was Gilbert Heers, a trader in copra and shell who lived on the nearby island of Vakuta. He went into the cave on 8 November 1968 accompanied by Meiwada, head of the sub-clan associated with Inakebu, who had never been inside before. Heers and Meiwada investigated the two outer chambers but then turned back because they had only poor lights. They returned with better light on 15 November. Since they had not become sick or died, they then found seven other men willing to accompany them. They found the narrow opening leading to the final chamber, and discovered the drawings. None of the men, many of whom were quite old, had ever seen the drawings or heard any mention of them before. The drawings are the only indication that people had previously been in this deep chamber. There are no ashes or soot marks, no footprints, and no pottery, bones or shells such as are commonly found in other Trobriand caves, though bones and shells occur in the chamber near the entrance. With one exception, the drawings are all on the same sort of surface, a clean bedrock surface on cream coloured, fairly dense and uniform limestone, with a suitably rough texture. Generally the surface has a slight overhang, and so is protected from flows or dripping water. On surfaces with dripstone shawls or stalactites, the drawings were always placed between the trickles, on the dry rock. We have found no examples that have been covered by a film of flow stone. The one drawing on a flow stone column is also still on the surface and not covered by later deposition. A film of later deposit would be good to show the age of the drawings, but since the drawings appear to have been deliberately located on dry sites the lack of cover does not indicate that they are necessarily young. There are stencil outlines of three hands, a few small patches of ochre which do not seem to have any form, numerous drawings in black line, and one small engraving.
The Wellington Caves are about 8 km south of the town of Wellington, New South Wales. They were discovered in the 1820s and their long and varied history as a vertebrate palaeontological site began about 1830. Most of the early fossil collections were made by the explorer and surveyor-general, Major T.L. Mitchell, from an upper stratigraphic unit exposed in Mitchell's Cave and Cathedral Cave. Such venerable palaeontologists as Cuvier, Pentland, Jameson and Owen examined the material. Phosphate mining operations in the early 1900s exposed additional sedimentary sequences and most of the later vertebrate collections have come from these mines. A history of the discovery and exploration of the caves, as well as of the more important palaeontological aspects, is given by Lane and Richards (1963). A number of theories on the origin of the caves and especially on the depositional environment of the bone-bearing sediments, has been offered and some of these are summarised by Lane and Richards (1963). Most of these were conceived before 1900, none of them are detailed and they are generally speculations presented as minor portions of other articles dealing with a broader subject.
During 1971, members of the University of N.S.W. Speleological Society (UNSWSS) were working on a project to determine water table levels, as represented by sumps, in some of the Bungonia Caves. It was soon realised that the accuracy of heights determined from the available surface surveys, usually "forestry compass" traverses, was insufficient. The author was asked to provide more accurate surface levels and, consequently, two trips were organised on 24-25 July and 31 July 1971 with the aim of establishing a differential levelling net in the plateau area. Personnel on the first trip comprised E.G. Anderson and A.J. Watson (Senior Photogrammetrist, N.S.W. Lands Department), surveyors, and A.J. Pavey and M. Caplehorn, UNSWSS, assistants. On the second trip, M. Caplehorn was replaced by A. Culberg, UNSWSS.
Rhodamine WT, leucophor HBS and fluorescein were inserted into Deep, Eagles Nest and Traverse Creeks respectively, all sinking wholly or partly into the limestone at Yarrangobilly, as part of a program to determine the catchment area of Hollin Cave. Hollin Cave and three other major springs, together with the Yarrangobilly River above, between and below these springs, were sampled for various periods manually or by machine. Heavy rains began a day after dye insertion. Various lines of evidence and analysis, including the plotting of regression residuals between different wavebands as time series, showed that the relevant fluorescent wavebands were affected by rises in natural fluorescence in the runoff, probably of organic origin. Green was affected most, then blue, and orange only slightly. It was possible to identify a dye pulse of rhodamine at Hollin Cave, most probably representing all the dye put in. A leucophor dye pulse was also identifiable here but a load curve could not be constructed because of probable interference by changing natural fluorescence. Tracing by fluorescein became impossible. Interference between the three dyes was demonstrated. The implications for future quantitative tracing here are discussed.
Investigation of two King Island sea caves developed in quartzitic rocks shows them to contain a wealth of clastic and chemical sediments. Clastic sediments consist of wave-rounded cobbles, debris cones, and angular rock fragments produced by frost weathering and crystal wedging. Chemical deposits include a variety of calcium carbonate speleothems and also gypsum occurring as wall crusts and blisters. The latter appear to be a speleothem type of rare occurrence. Growth of gypsum is responsible for some crystal wedging of the bedrock. Three basal stalagmite samples have been dated by the Th/U method indicating Late Pleistocene as well as Holocene speleothem growth. The caves are believed to have formed by preferential wave erosion during the Last Interglacial in altered and fractured quartzites. The evidence for pre-Holocene evolution of sea caves and geos in the Tasman region is summarised. Tasmania and the Bass Strait Islands provide a particularly favourable environment for the preservation of relict landforms on rocky coasts because of Late Quaternary uplift. The potential of further studies of sea caves to test two recently advanced archaeological hypotheses is discussed.
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