By Tony Sharp
For one hundred miles inland from the sea under the ground was limestone. Where there is limestone there is always caves.
Where I lived as a boy there were many know caves. But for every know cave there were a hundred unknown caves. One of the most beautiful cave is called the Tantanula cave. It is not a big cave like the Princes Margot Rose Cave but it is the most beautiful cave. It was found by a boy who noticed rabbits going into a hole. This hole was not dug by a rabbit as the hole was rock. He put is dog down the hole and the dog got lost in the cave and never came back so the boy went to get help to dig the hole bigger and that how they found both the dog and the cave.
The stalagmites hanging from the roof dripped water and exactly below the stalactites grew up. In many places they had grown to together.
Two streets away from my house was a cave that was full of water. It was a wet water cave called the Unfromstone cave because it was in Unfromstone street. The police had a big locked door so no one could get in. It was used to train the police divers and it had three underwater caverns, one that stretched towards our house.
When I was fourteen while playing around in the backyard I noticed that if I jumped just by the corner of the truck shed the whole ground would make a very hollow sound. I had noticed it before but had never thought that maybe there might be a cave underground.
My friends father had dug a well by digging down using a four inch auger called a post hole borer. It had a long pipe attached to a tee handle. By turning the tee handle around and around it would bore a four inch hole straight down. By screwing on additional lengths of pipe it was possible to go down to forty feet to find water for your own private well.
I didn’t tell my mother I was going to dig a well, she might so no. I keep all the parts to the auger behind the wood pile. When she went shopping I would get put in a hard hour boring down. I hid the dirt that I dug up in the back garden. I always made sure to finish in time. To replace wood over the hole and the plug off grass back in place before she come home. I was not being naughty, I just wanted to show my mother I could do something on my own and it would be a big surprise to give her a private well so she could water the garden in the summer. Inside I was hoping to find a cave. At twelve feet down I struck soft white limestone. Now I started hiding the limestone behind the wood pile. As I continued drilling down I screwed new sections of pipe onto the digging auger. I continued my drilling until I was six feet into the limestone when I got a big fright. I was turning the borer around and around just like normal when without warning it just dropped out of my hands and the tee handles hit my feet. I was so excited I had broken through to a cave. I was very tired after pulling all the pipe and the auger out of the hole and storing them behind the wood pile. With time to spare before my mother came home I got my fishing rod tied a sinker on the end and lowered it down the whole. Finally it reach the bottom. Next I cut the line and tied a loop in the end, then pulled the line up and laid it out on the back lawn. Now I could measure it. How far from the cave roof to the floor. The answer figured out was so exciting. My hole was twenty two feet deep and the cave depth was another fifty five feet deep. Now I really wanted to know was my cave a dry or wet cave, would it be beautiful like the Tantanula cave or an extension of the Umfromstone cave two streets away. My mother was due home so I covered up the hole as usual. It was agony waiting for my mother’s next shopping trip. I found many old strings use to holed the hay bales together, these I tied together and attached a big bolt on one end. It would be easy to see if any of the string was wet. Finally mother went out. I raced to get the plug of grass out and the wood that covered the hole and with great excitement let down the string till it hit the bottom then pull it up again. The further it came up dry the more exited I got will at last it was all out and all dry except of a bit of the bolt which was wet.
Did didn’t tell my math teacher way I wanted to fur out how far a set of stairs would have to start to do down seventy seven feet I was devastated to learn that I could not reach my cave from our property. Digging straight down and using a ladder would be not possible to do without telling my mum, and now I wanted it to be my own private cave.
I lay in bed dreaming of my own but how could I get inside, then I had a bright idea. Maybe it might be less deep at another point further away from my first hole. My second was a lot easier to dig than the first hole. It went down behind the wood pile about forty feet from the old hole.
My idea was right auger broke through just twelve feet down and I could lower the auger a further five feet to find the floor and to my excitement the auger was dry.
At school I came top of the class in woodwork and I was planning on becoming a builder when I finished school. These skills allowed me to build a secret removable floor in the bottom of my wardrobe in my bedroom. Under this false bottom I cut the house floor boards to get to the ground under the house. From there I started digging a set of stairs.
The wonderful thing about compasses is they work just the same underground. It was by this method I kept my stairs going straight. I spread the dirt around under the house from the first part of the staircase. When I got to the limestone layer would bring the white crumbly stone up in a bucket and pour it down the hole in the truck shed. It was so frustrating not being able to work except when my mother was away. Imagine my delight when she ask me if I minded being on my own for three days as she had to go to the big city for some medical tests.
“Don’t worry about me mother I can cook for myself and my friend Jim can come and watch videos if I get lonely.” I said. It was hard to be that excited on the inside and not show it. For the next three days I worked sixteen hours per day. I was so close to break through level when I had to stop. I needed to clean up and bits of limestone I might have dropped. The kitchen look as if a bomb had gone off inside. Everything was dirty and cleaning up took two hours. I had just finished getting everything neat and tidy when my mother came home. It was agony waiting for the next digging chance.
“I’m going to Allendale to see my friend on Sunday will you be ok on your own again?”
“Yes Mum” I said as if I didn’t care. Inside I cared more than anything in the world. I was sure if in six hours, if I stored the rubble on the higher steps I could break through.
As the car drove out the drive I was going down through my secret wardrobe floor. I had plenty of light from a power lead which went down the stairs. It hung from nails on the rounded roof. It is so easy hammering nails into limestone.
I was really surprised. I thought today was going to a very hard days digging. The first swing of the pick caused the whole face of my tunnel to collapse away from me into the darkness beyond. How amazing I had been just one more swing away from break through when I packed up last week. It was so unfair to have to had waited but in this moment I was not thinking of anything but pulling the lead light as far as it would reach. First I inspected that the roof was safe and climbed through the whole, picking my way across the rubble of the collapse.
The size if the cavern left me breathless, it was huge so huge the light only showed the portion where I was. Massive Stalagmites and Stalactites had grown together. They looked like towering twirling icing going around and around the columns that were helping to support the roof. Slightly down the slope among hundreds of Stalagmites was a pile of dirt and limestone rubble. Straight above I could just see my second hole which came through from the truck shed. It struck me That I was the first person ever to see this wonder, it was so beautiful. Just at the very edge of the light I saw the reflections of thousands of roof Stalactites in a pool perfectly still water. The mirror image was spectacular. I wanted to explore further but my lead light was my life line. If the bulb blew or there was a power failure I would be trapped in the dark with no way out. It was just as well I had thought about this as I tripped on one off the many Stalagmites and the bump to my lead light busted the bulb and all went pitch black. I was not afraid I could still get back. The slowly as my eyes adjusted to the light I become aware of millions of tiny green lights started glowing from the roof. I didn’t know it then. I had never even heard of glow worms. I just stood there transfixed in total wonder of how fantastic was my own private cave.
Ronald A. D. Sharp Jr.
