What They Just Found Hidden Under Australia's Desert Changes Everything

Beneath the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia, a hole in the ground with no sign and no car park leads to six kilometres of flooded underground passages so clear divers describe feeling like they are floating in air. The cave has been explored since 1961. Every expedition has stopped not because the passage ended but because the equipment ran out first. Nobody has reached the back of it. In the dry sections of the Nullarbor cave system, archaeologists have found evidence of ancient Aboriginal habitation from a time when these passages were accessible on foot, before rising sea levels sealed them underwater. The Mirning people whose country this has always been were moved away from it over a century ago. Most of what they knew about these caves was never recorded.