Expedition to Slide and Maze

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Rocking up in Ed's big utility truck we parked in a side street off from Slide. Roving through the side streets we came across the access ladder by the railway. Dropping down into the drain we decided to walk upstream to take a look at the round pipe tunnel. This is quite an interesting tunnel seeing as how it diverts water from the open canal. Makes us wonder why the canal's still being used. Oh well, time to go torture our feet.

The section that we were exploring was an open section of the drain and soon were roaming around in it. This was the first time Merinda Park had been here and she was impressed, that was until the sides of the canal started getting steep. We were given the choice of walking down the middle or along the edges. Now walking on the edges gives you sore feet, walking along the middle had us slipping over every few minutes. Whoever designed this drain had given little thought to any future need for servicing it.

Since the last time that we visited this tunnel someone has courteously painted some nice blue signs telling you exactly that this is Slide and that the upstream bit of Maze was 3 minutes away and the downstream bit 6 minutes walk away.

We walked into Slide. The place was a bit on the nose bit in we strode. The tunnel was quite a nice red brick tunnel about 1.8 to 2 meters tall, you can walk upright in it no problems at all. The tunnel curves towards the left and about 50 meters in there is a blue stone arch where we spotted a fair amount of messages and graffiti, particularly messages from people like Ash, Bob and more.

One thing about this tunnel is that it's one of the few you can safely do with one flashlight because there's a fair number of manholes which let in light and air. Further up the tunnel it changed into a strange red brick pipe with a larger upper half than lower half, having ledges at about waist height on either side. The best way to walk along this tunnel is straight down the middle. From quite a distance off you can hear the slide. When you finally get to it there's a fair bit of light shining from the manhole above. The slide is about 3 meters high all up and is a real pain to climb up. We know it can be done, we've seen pictures of it being done but we weren't about to try it. We looked longingly at the two square tunnels above the slide before turning back. How the heck were you supposed to get up there without a rope, ladder or stairs?

We returned to the Maze and walked downstream. We really don't like this drain much, we always come out of it with sore ankles and sore feet. We walked along, swapping from side to side. We discovered that someone had ripped down our old tags and painted over Silk's visitor sheet, but what the heck, the visitor sheet's main purpose was to find out if people visited this drain or not. One way or another we had found out that people did visit the place. Well there's no respect down in those drains.

We walked on, down the drains. We passed under a street and under the park. where Merinda Park did a nice flop into the water. She was okay though, She stood up in the flowing water, wet as humanly possible, said it reminds her of the time we went water skiing behind a plane. So picking up Merinda Park we strode on, under the streets and on past the offices and a car park, finally exiting the system by Hawthorn station. With tiered and sore feet we walked back to the truck.

Underworld

On the way home Ed insisted on making a big detour to inspect Underworld. "That place is supposed to be a bit of a legend amongst drain explorers, maybe we should pay it a visit now that we've found it." Ed insisted.

Battling our way through peak hour traffic we pointed the truck south and through the leafy streets on the way to the drain. We did the run of the round abouts and parked the truck right behinds a nice shiny new Mercedes Benz. There must have been about 3 centimeters between us and it, and about a foot between it and the car ahead.

Grinning with satisfaction we strode through the lane to the park towards the water. So where was that entrance. Blasted new fences! Damn prickly succulents. So we walked towards the water and looked around. It was hard to find until we spotted the concrete portal and fence and walked over to have a look at it.

"Small!" Ed complained. " I thought it was bigger. It's a wimpy little 1.2 meter concrete. We won't even be able to get the boat into that."

"It gets bigger." We pointed out. We should take a look at it some other time. Maybe in Summer.

We strode back to the truck and piled in. To our annoyance no one complained about our parking so we drove off home till the next sunny day.