Tales
from the drains
7
th July 1998
The
people you meet in drains.
The very first time I ever met anyone in a drain was while I was visiting Dungeon. I had wandered in and gone quite some way up and was on my way down when I heard voices down the drain. That was nothing unusual, as you quite often hear voices down drains, sometimes they�re real, drifting down from above and sometimes they�re your imagination playing tricks on you.
That�s what I thought it was at first, just drain voices. I was walking back towards the little slide at the second station so I figured it was the gurgling of the water there, which I often though I heard voices in. But these were clearer, louder and crisper, yelling crap up the drain. " Hello. Dave is here. Yahoo." And so on.
I waited till I figured I was fairly close and then I yelled back down the drain: " Hey you down there, shut the crap up!"
That seemed to spook them because I heard no voices for a while, even when I cooeed down the drain. I finally heard them again back near the entrance, I was pondering how they managed to outdistance me so fast. This appeared to be because they were on pushbikes. The group turned out to be a bunch of four kids from a local school. They were in their early teens. To my amazement they had travelled up to the slide without a flashlight.
They naturally wanted to know what I had been doing in the tunnel so we chatted and I soon left.
Some months later while making a trip out to that drain I spotted a bunch of teenagers, about ten of them skating in the open canal as I walked out of the southern tunnels. They asked me what I was doing. By this time I was realising that most ordinary people will believe any crap that you spin about stuff in drains so I calmly told them that " I�ve been checking out the subway train." " Huh, what do you mean?" They replied. " Oh well back in the twenties when they were building the railway line they couldn�t build a track down here because it was all private land so they built a tunnel right along here and ran a subway in it. Later they built the new railway line. They�ve still got a subway train down there." I said. To my amazement they believed me. I left them as they planned an expedition to check out the subway train�.
Anzac
Anzac, in Prahran is always a good place to meet people down drains, as there�s almost always someone there in the evening.
Emor and I popped down one night to check the place out. As we were walking up Emor spotted footprints on the concrete and said " There�s someone down here." I was doubtful but sure enough, he was right. We got to the chamber and spotted a flashlight light. Not even giving a second thought to the fact that it could be anyone other than drain explorers we wandered up.
On the ledge near the stairs were three teenagers camped out for the night. It didn�t take us long to figure out that these guys were off their face on something. They were quite out of it. One guy almost yelled. " Do you guys take trips?" When we introduced ourselves as drain explorers. Emor and I replied that we didn�t while trying not to laugh. I don�t mean to pick the shit out of the guys but they were really funny in a sad sort of way.
We chatted and they explained how they had been down some �really big drain� which after a while I figured to be Mini-Tenth, which sure enough is a big drain, one of the biggest. They waxed lyrically about how they were going to get seriously into exploring drains and how they had done three already, which I had to admit was pretty good for people as zonked out of their brains as these three.
They asked how they could find out more about drains. Emor and I were not too keen to encourage them so we gave vague directions for our web sites and then I asked if their parents knew where they were. It was a case of "They think I�m at his place and his parents think he�s at my place." And so on.
More recently, while on a expo to do a paint job in Anzac we met a couple of chaps from England. It appears that they lived in the area and decided on a whim to take a look down Anzac. We chatted away and talked a lot and generally had a good night. It was interesting to note that they had never gone down drains in England, having only taken up the sport while visiting UA City. They were about the oldest and most mature people we ever met in drains.
The NFIs.
These bunch of teenagers are a bit of a mystery. Some while back, Emor and I went off to visit Coffin, as small drain with some of its own unique charm. Arriving at the entrance we spotted a bunch of teenagers sitting in drain entrance in pursuit of � Hmm, well they were getting off of their faces, seems to be a pastime for teenagers today.
Emor and I chatted away with them, explained that we were drain explorers and then headed up the drain. They told us one of their number was up the drain skateboarding. Sure enough, we could hear him. We yelled ahead and could hear the guy. When we got to the junction we spotted a skateboard but there was no sign of anyone there. " Ah, just what I need, a new skateboard!" I exclaimed. That brought its' owner running from a crawl tunnel (yeah, he was running in a crawl tunnel!) to claim his board.
We were soon joined by some kids, who had no flashlights and who followed us up to the grilles. After checking out the drain we went back to the entrance. I asked if they wanted a snap to be shown on the net and they emphatically etched "Yes!". I took a pic, but later the photo shop lost the film!
A week later Emor and I went off to check out Glass Creek and Tenth. We pulled up at Glass Creek and there sitting in the entrance was the same bunch of teenagers, only more of them! They were planning to do a tour of the drain and take along a video camera. They agreed to join Emor and I exploring the drain, which was a good thing because they only had one crappy flashlight between them all and we had 3 good Dolphin flashlights.
Although they knew the drain well, some of the questions we received from some of the members of the NFIs were pretty out there. I have to credit Valour and a couple of others though who were pretty together people and were fairly mature for their age. But Emor and I had to stop ourselves from laughing when we they asked us things like: " What would we do if we met someone in the drains, would they fight us?" " Are there like dead bodies in the drains?" and so on. The answers to the best of my knowledge are no.
So with one slightly off his head teenager and a group of 7 more we wandered up the drain and were given a pretty good guided tour of the drain, and shown things we probably would not have seen or found otherwise. While I had to laugh at some of the things asked and the behaviour of some of the teenagers I have to admit that Valour, Yeddy? and the other guy who looks like Valour�s brother (both have curly hair) were pretty cool and knew their stuff.
Sadly we lost contact with the NFIs and they did not e-mail us back.
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