Greek Australian parents get excited when their children travel to Greece on their own initiative, but maybe less so if your 22-year-old says they will begin their trip hundreds of metres below the earth, with just sustenance food, and will confront a myriad of risks.

Greek parents would naturally freak out. Refreshingly that was not the case for Antigony Haikalis’ parents, when she announced her Cretan adventure entailed cave exploration into one of Greece’s deepest caves.

Antigony did spare them some of the more confronting details, at first.

“I thought, better for me to get locked into it and then they can look it up online and see,” she laughs.

Her August caving expedition involved a decent starting from the 2,000 plus metres peak of Sternes, the central point of Crete’s White Mountains, located in Chania.

“Halfway through the hike when I got some reception and contacted my parents they said ‘Oh my goodness, we looked up all the things from the expedition and it looks amazing. Please take us caving when you get back” ‘this was not the reaction I was expecting’.” she tells Neos Kosmos.

Antigony returned to Melbourne after completing a 14-day cave exploration of the Cretan mountain range.

The Sternes international expedition has been running annually for the past seven years, following a breakthrough in past missions since the 1990s which mapped the length and depth of various passages.

There is plenty to be discovered, Haikalis explains.

Discovery and life underground

“We surveyed about three kilometres extra of cave of the horizontal section and there is still possibility for more depth.

“It’s exciting, what happens in Australia with caves usually is that you’ll stop exploring because you’ve hit a dead-end, whereas in Sternes, people have to turn around and go back because the survey devices run out of battery or people have been going on for hours but they are still not at the end of the route.”

Horizontal passages in the Sternes cave start at a depth of 600 plus metres.

That is where the exploration begins.

“Passages of the horizontal section go in so many different directions that it’s sort of a gamble of which one is going to be the one that provides more depth to the cave.”

The 2023 Sternes expedition was organised by the Speleological Club of Crete with support from peak bodies in the global community of cave exploration, namely the International Union of Speleology, the European Speleological Federation, and the National Speleological Society in the United States.

Haikalis and friend Kristen were the only Australians in the more than 40 cavers from the UK, Italy, Israel, the US, Canada and Greece.

Depending on the day and the participants, the team was divided in groups taking the deep dive into the cave, with some doing back-and-forth trips for supplies.

Some returned to the mountaintop camp for the night while a group of four at each time would sleep at the underground smaller camp of 500m plus depth set up for the expedition.

“We set up almost a tent inside the cave, with a big fabric hanging down. The cave gets cold, 4 Celsius, and by the time you get down there you’re normally a wet. But your clothes dry from the warmth inside that little tent because from body heat.”

On a typical day, cavers would spend their time in the cave after breakfast and only come back to one of the camps for dinner –with some snacks in between.

“But sometimes you get busy and forget to eat because of the adrenaline that keeps you going.”

Protein is a must. “Lots of boiled eggs, Cretan raki at the end of the day, and the Greek brand of Nutella spread”.

“We had so many eggs,” she laughs.

Beyond more mapping, the aims of the expedition included documenting geology, fauna and hydrology findings.

For Haikalis, her first trip solo to her parents’ homeland featured cultural add-ons.

Deep dive into Greek culture

“It was nice to be able to speak some of the language, know the culture and have that connection with Greek people. Somebody brought a mandolin and we wrote a Greek song about the expedition.

“One of my favourite memories was lying on a hammock in the camp kitchen, while someone was playing music and I was just watching the stars and fell asleep like that

Realising that her Greek often a reflection of her diaspora background, come across as old fashioned was one amusing cultural insight.

“When my grandparents migrated to Australia, they brought with them obviously the way Greeks spoke in the 40s and 50s. So, I realised this is not always the way Greeks nowadays speak.

“I remember exclaiming ‘Hristoulis’ [little Christ] when a Greek person sneezed and they told me smiling ‘Only my grandma would say this!’.

Haikalis acknowledges, that considering the real risks it is not a typical activity parents are keen for their children to take up.

She says her parents are to credit for this passion she developed, partly thanks to a ‘Greek migrant mindset’ aspect.

“I think that because my parents were exposed to conservatism while growing up, they wanted to make sure my sister and I didn’t have to face this.

“I’m lucky they’ve always said, ‘even though it’s scary and makes us anxious, we’re not going to let it get in the way of you spreading your wings. We trust you and we don’t have a right to stop you from doing what you love.'”

“For me, caving is also a mental game, once you go down, the only way that you’re getting back up out of the cave is by pulling yourself out. Having that sort of self-reliance gives you more confidence to do anything.

“It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but that feeling of accomplishment, when I get out of the cave, and night has already fallen I look at the Milky Way, or when you get down to the bottom of the cave and see beautiful crystals, and knowing it’s something most people will never see, makes it all worthwhile.”