Raising the dead

“Raising the dead : an Australian story of death and survival” by Phillip Finch.
On New Year’s Day in 2005, Australian diver Dave Shaw was halfway around the world at a steep water-filled crater in the Kalahari Desert. His destination was nearly 900’ or over 270 meters below the surface.
Wearing some of the most advanced diving equipment Shaw descended Bushman’s Hole, just below the surface was a narrow fissure, he slipped through the opening and disappeared from sight into a huge deep cavern.
Minutes later a second diver descended through the same crack in the stone. Don Shirley, Shaw’s friend and frequent dive partner was a master among the community of cave diving.
25 minutes later one of the men was dead, and the other in mortal peril, facing a struggle to survive for the next ten hours, existing literally from breath to breath.
The organised expedition was to raise the body of Deon Dreyer who had died in Bushman’s in 1994. Shaw had discovered the body on a dive in 2004 when he was setting a depth world record, but was unable to lift the body from the floor of the cave.
He returned early in 2005 with a team of support divers, mining and police rescue teams, and heaps of equipment including a mobile recompression chamber and nearly 100 breathing cylinders.
The book covers Don’s early life in Australia, his work as a pilot for the airline Cathay Pacific, and his interest in diving, in particular in the rebreather technology and deep diving. The story moves forwards and backwards several times, and though you know generally what will happen, it still grips you.
“Raising the dead” is about the perilous sport of deep and cave diving – its history, its culture and the individuals who pursue it.
I read nearly half of the book (145 of the 305 pages) in one sitting, and then kept thinking about it long afterwards. Things like: this dive was about Dave’s 330th dive; the families; getting ‘bent’ with an inner ear injury; and Dave’s choice of music – there’s an appendix at the back of the book with his iPod playlists, I think it says a lot about the guy.
(The photos are mine taken with a disposable camera on the surface at Vaikona Chasm, definitely not in the same league)