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There’s a cave in Mount Gambier called Engelbrecht Cave. Engelbrecht was the bloke who lived right above it — and yep, the cave’s smack bang under the town itself. Wasn’t a coincidence he lived there, and funnily enough, his last name wasn’t random either.
Turns out, Engelbrecht was German. No big surprise there — South Australia was a real hotspot for German immigrants back in the day. Even now, you’ll find proper old-school German villages around the place.
But Engelbrecht wasn’t just any old German — he was a hardworking, practical kind of fella, proper handy. Made a living setting up a whiskey distillery. Good gig too, everyone loves a drop. Only problem is, making whiskey leaves you with a bunch of liquid waste you gotta get rid of somehow. So our mate set up his still not far from the town tip.
Yep — right by that cave! See, back in the 1800s, the Mount Gambier council reckoned all the sinkholes and caves around were perfect spots to chuck rubbish into. So they spent the next 40–50 years filling them up with all sorts of junk.
And there’s heaps of caves down there. These days they reckon there’s at least 40 caves under the town, and heaps of them still haven’t been properly explored. Most of ‘em are flooded with underground water. Only a couple have a dry entrance where divers can gear up and head underwater. One of those dry caves? Right under Engelbrecht’s whiskey setup.
While Engelbrecht was still kicking, he kept pouring his waste down there — and for a bit of extra cash, he even let local butchers toss cow bones and other crap into the cave too. But when he carked it in 1914, the council didn’t renew the rubbish-dumping licence.
Eventually they cleaned all the junk out and fixed the cave up for tourists and divers. You can even see the water entrance in the pics. Fun fact — the diver in the photo’s a fake — just a mannequin hanging from the roof!
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As for the tram, that was over in Portland — a port town just across the border in Victoria. I stopped in on the way home. Portland’s a decent-sized, pretty old town. Was actually in the running to be the state capital once, but Melbourne ended up getting the nod.
The local tram’s purely for the tourists these days. They built the line to run along the waterfront, and the tram itself was put together in the 2000s with a Nissan engine under the hood. Still, was a bit of fun!
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Подводная пещера и трамвай - Маунт Гамбиер, альбом третий
Пещера в Маунт Гамбиер называется Engelbrecht Cave. Энгельбрехт - это был чувак, который жил над самой пещерой, которая кстати, расположена прямо под городом. Жил он там не случайно и фамилия у него тоже была неслучайная.
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