A unique look inside Auckland's underground lava caves

Monday, 4 December 2017

The pictures will be on display until Christmas Eve.

Auckland is known for its many volcanic cones. Few realise that geologic history has left another volcanic marvel just beneath their feet.

Visual artist Chirag Jindal and speleologist Peter Crossley have spent the past 18 months carrying $100,000 worth of equipment into 10 Auckland lava caves.

Some of the caves are over 40,000 years old. Most have remained largely unknown as they lie below private property.

A lava cave underneath an Auckland street - the researchers won't name the street for fear it will attract people to try to enter the cave.

Jindal and Crossley used a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanner which has produced never before seen images of the caves.

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A cave stretching off a house basement, scanned by Chirag Jindal.

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One scan takes roughly 10 minutes, but depending on the size of the cave, upwards of 20 individual scans were sometimes required to capture the full scale of a cave.

Jindal said the scanning was the quickest aspect of the project, with other obstacles taking up most of their time.

Auckland is the only region in New Zealand, and one of the only places in the world, that has lava caves like these beneath its surface.

'Taking the scanner into the caves took the most time,' he said. 'We had to crawl through man holes and go through people's backyards just to get to where we needed to be, with permission of course.'

Jindal said they spent three days scanning one particular lava cave in Three Kings.

Auckland is the only region in New Zealand, and one of the only places in the world, that has lava caves like these beneath its surface, the pair say.

Jindal said that most Aucklanders aren't aware of these caves and one of the motivations behind the project was to shed light on their beauty.

'We wanted to express an immersive narrative about the caves,' said Jindal.

Jindal said that LiDAR scanning is an 'emerging technology' - it has been used by archaeologists to discover a Mayan city and a settlement around Angkor Wat in Asia.

Jindal was excited to 'showcase the power of LiDAR to reveal the hidden environment.'

The full array of images will be on display at the Into the Underworld exhibition which is being held at Wynyard Quarter's Silo Park in Auckland, from the 9th to the 24th of December.