Did another random drain in the city tonight. I had heard there were a couple of old drains around Kangaroo Point, so I fired up Google Earth and spotted a likely candidate. Low tide had already passed so I hadn't planned to go in today, but I went in anyway with another guy to take a look - ended up going in for a squiz.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint01.jpg
First impressions were good - unlike the last one we did near North Quay which was brick-lined, this is cut directly from the rock. You can see marine growth (the white shell bits) around the place.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint02.jpg
Other guy, the CBD in the background.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint06.jpg
Long slog, footing varies from bad to attrocious in cheap gumboots. The drain is tidal for a hundred or so metres of very gentle upwards gradient, then the shells and such are gone, but there is still a steady flow of water from upstream keeping the floor swept to bare rock with slime on it, lots of small gutters and pits to snag your foot. Nearly went arse over head a lot of times.

Had these little tiny bats occasionally flit past us at speed, they must have been roosting in there until we disturbed them.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint08.jpg
Still going. Not sure where these big rocks and sections of brickwork come from. No obvious chunks missing from the ceiling, and it would take a huge flow to sweep them down from somewhere upstream.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint09.jpg
This was the first change in the tunnel. Manhole was about 8 metres up, no ladder to get up there, traffic heard passing over it.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint11.jpg
After what felt like ages but was probably only four or five hundred metres of sliding all over the place we reached proper brickwork, better footing, and branches to liven things up a bit. Tried a few branches, didn't find much. One interesting thing was the lack of graffiti until this point. Maybe people usually don't come from the river end of the drain?

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint13.jpg
This junction had a suggestion telling us not to bother with the left branch (see on the wall to the right of the entrance). We decided that someone was trying to hide the awesome from us and forged on. After a couple of hundred metres of shrinking tunnel and cricked necks we decided to trust the guy with the marker after all and turned back, took the right branch instead.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint14.jpg
For some reason this drain more than any other was a big hit with the cockroaches. Saw hundreds if not thousands in a few tens of metres of tunnel. Nice... The smell was not great, either. Must have been something edible to cockroaches in the area.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint16.jpg
Heard tweeting and grabbed a photo of one of the teeny bats making a getaway. One of them couldn't seem to figure out how to get away from us and kept going around in circles (that's the one in the picture). Could hear trains rumbling somewhere nearby and couldn't for the life of me figure out where we'd ended up (I was thinking South Brisbane station area).

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint17.jpg
Realised there was a tiny tree and fresh leaves on the other side of that support, same as last time I stumbled on the exit and didn't even know I was outside for a while.

http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint19.jpg
http://users.tpg.com.au/sam69c/Kangaroo Point Drain/KangarooPoint18.jpg
The train line turned out to be in between Vulture St station and Park Road station, we were inside a construction area next to the tracks, houses all around. walked along the tracks, found the gate out and jumped it. Walked off to the CBD, bought Krispy Kreme and coffee, night over :)

All in all I don't think tonight was as interesting as the last drain we did(this thread), but it was still prety cool.

when will you go through some westfield shopping centres?

ninja edit

last edited by infi at 00:46:39 03/Aug/08

Judging by that second picture you found a few shrooms.

One thing I found myself wondering was how they made this drain. Must have blasted through, surely manual hacking through all that rock would have taken forever... Then again maybe the drain is fairly new and machines were used.

Unless it was manpower during the depression


assuming it was made that long ago

The pics in your other thread are broken

cool thread, dont see s*** like this often. urban exploring ftw.

Judging by that second picture you found a few shrooms.

Explains why he found this so entertaining.

how long before this dude from 4chan murders you

how do you not get lost?

im sure you would have been welcome in the coffee shop wet up to your knees in jeans and wearing gumboots....

It was a Saturday night, there were stranger people around.

Did you hear any rumbling or rock-grinding noises? You must have come fairly close to the Bypass Tunnel roadheaders.

Nah none of that, just trains, bats and water.

cool thread keep them coming.

P.S you should create a map of the tunnels you find (unless you already have)

Yeah, you could sell the map on ebay, it would be worth thousands to like minded individuals.

what does the writing on the wall say "telling us not to bother with the left branch" ?

cool stuff anway :}

Yeah, you could sell the map on ebay, it would be worth thousands to like minded individuals.

Nah, as Scooter said in the other thread you can get plans from the council with a bit of bluffing.

The writing on the wall says " ^ NOT f***IN WORTH IT LONG WAIT FOR NOTHING". I imagine he or she meant "walk" rather than "wait".

You really think the council would know what drains are under our city? You must think they run the place or something.

keep it coming m8 , Interesting stuff

Im willing to bet a fair few graffers have bothered to go down and draw maps...they may also draw other things....

some dude drowned last night, sounds like he was doing some urban exploration...!

I remember a lot of kids dying when i was young in sydney from doing this.. it is dangerous.

Yeah, you'd want to be bloody careful doing that.

If you're underdground for a while you wouldn't even know of a storm brewing outside. I'd imagine those tunnels would fill up with water pretty quickly in a big down pour.

Would be fun though Indiana stylze.

they would pretty much fill up instantly in storm half the size of the one we got last night

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24661926-1248,00.html

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24661926-1248,00.html

play with fire, get burnt etc.