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Retrieval of cave diver's body could take up to five days

Megan Levy, Farah Farouque
March 1, 2011

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Cave diver dies in 7km cave

South Australian police are to retrieve the body of a Victorian diver who died while exploring Australia's longest underwater cave.

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Police believe it could take up to five days to retrieve the body of an experienced Melbourne diver who died in an accident in Australia’s longest underwater cave system at the weekend.

Agnes Milowka, 29, was exploring Tank Cave, a seven-kilometre maze of passageways near Mount Gambier in South Australia, when she disappeared after reportedly leaving her diving buddy on Sunday afternoon.

The body of the accomplished and world-recognised diver was found trapped about 600 metres from the entrance of the subterranean cave system.

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South Australia police divers, along with members of the Cave Divers Association of Australia, entered the area yesterday and mapped a route to retrieve her body, which is trapped in a very small area.

Police have warned the retrieval could be prolonged.

‘‘The dives [yesterday] in the intricate cave system have been to assess the difficulties and safety issues involved in the retrieval attempt. The woman’s body is trapped in a very small area,’’ South Australia police said.

Agnes Milowka, as she appeared in a video she posted on Youtube.

‘‘The retrieval attempt will be an extremely complex operation and may take as long as five days.’’

It is understood Ms Milowka’s parents are at the site as the retrieval operation continues.

Ms Milowka had dived many times previously in Tank Cave, exploring and mapping its unknown passages.

The 29-year-old was well-known in diving circles both in Australia and around the world, and had worked as a stunt diver on James Cameron’s 3D diving film Sanctum.

On Friday, she tweeted of her excitement about her impending diving trip to South Australia.

"Another w-end of cave diving in Mt Gambier ... fabulous! Can’t wait to get underground," she wrote.

At some time during Sunday’s dive, with a group from Victoria, she was believed to have left her buddy, and never returned.

Her fellow divers reported her missing at 1.45pm, with one able to identify an area within the cave system where Ms Milowka was last seen.

Superintendent Trevor Twilley said police would not be able to determine what went wrong until they recovered and tested Ms Milowka’s equipment. Officers have now sealed off the sinkhole.

Ms Milowka began cave diving in 2005 and had completed more than 500 dives when she died. On her personal website, which is emblazoned with the motto "PASSION … DARING … ADVENTURE’’, she revealed that diving generally had been ’’at the very centre of my existence’’ since 2002.

"You dive often enough and for long enough, and you will find that the age-old saying ’Whatever can go wrong will go wrong’ is not a cliche but a hard and fast reality,’’ she blogged last year in a prescient post titled, ’’When things go wrong underwater.’’

"People often freak out when I start talking about cave diving and they assume that the most dangerous and scariest moments I’ve experienced underwater have been in caves. In fact, my scariest in-water moment was not inside a cave system but in open water …’’

In an article published on the website in November, Ms Milowka wrote of her experiences in Tank Cave, describing it as "a spiderweb gone wild" and "unlike any other in the Mt Gambier region, it is a real gem and it is a joy to dive".

"The cave is stunning, it is relatively shallow (a max depth around 20m), there is no flow to fight and the water is crystal clear - you can’t go wrong really," she wrote.

She also wrote of a new passage in Tank Cave she had discovered with a colleague, and described numerous "tight bits" where some divers may have had to take off their tanks to squeeze through.

"The walls and roof to begin with are quite soft and squishy, which means that large chunks of the roof rain down on you as you exhale and the visibility is quickly reduced to zero," she wrote.

"This is not only a hazard when coming back out through the small restrictions but it also means that this section of the cave is particularly fragile and needs to be handled with a bit of tender love and care."

She also said she would continue to explore the unmapped tunnels and passages in Tank Cave, which was "top of my list when heading over to Mt Gambier".

Stephen Newton, principal at Caulfield Grammar where she attended high school, yesterday described Ms Milowka as a "wonderful contributor’’ who had excelled in sport and studies. She was a house captain, champion school rower and was a finalist in the statewide VCE achiever award.

Her website says she holds the current penetration record for a woman diving in Australia, and had dived extensively in Florida in the US.

In March last year, in another cave diving misadventure, Melbourne doctor Robert McAlister died in a sinkhole at Mount Schank near Mount Gambier.

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