Dungeon Part A
Rating:1st September 2000

This drain system is one of the longest, if not the longest explorable, and most complex drain systems in the city. It has two large main tunnels and at least 6 large branch tunnels not including the many more that are too small to walk in. There are 2 main drains. It is possible to walk all the way over 5 kilometers point to point distance and 8 kilometers walk through tunnels. It takes about 8 hours to walk from end to end. There are more than twenty kilometers of tunnel in the system not including tunnels too low to walk in.

In both of the two main tunnels you can walk for over an hour without reaching the end. There are many interesting features in the drains, grilles, chambers, an interesting overflow room and much more; including Alf Sadlier Graffiti. You could take days to explore the entire system. It takes about 20 minutes from the entrance to the Grille. From the grille it takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to reach the Wall. The map is not totally accurate and is mainly to show the location of major features. I walked all around this suburb trying to trace the drain and ended up dropping bits of string down every manhole in sight with the location written on the end.

Even a round trip to the 20th arrow will take a bit over 3 hours. The only system that compares with it is Maze. This tunnel is one of the longest in the city, and also one of the largest.

Drain Report

The Main Northern tunnel Points of interest

1. The Entrance of the tunnel is in the canal, east of a road. Just in the entrance is the Main Northern tunnel on the left and the two RCPs of Main Southern tunnel on the right.

Immediately at the entrance to the tunnel is a guide to the tunnel it's self on the left wall although it's partly painted over. It is possible to follow the fifty arrows for the tour of this system. There's several different routes through the tunnel system.

2. The Slide. In from the entrance you come to a station and an easy and short slide. The slide is just a simple low slide that only gains about 30 cms in height. A narrow side pipe here leads into a large and high side pit with a concrete roof on the side of the road above. The concrete block on top is not movable. From here to the grille there are several manholes which provide almost enough light to do this section without a flashlight.

3. The Grille. At a park above a large grille runs across the entire width of the drain. In the past this grille also contained an access hatch but this has since been welded shut. From the last manhole before the grille to almost the grille it's self there is heaps of graffiti on the left wall, including some stuff from a group of tunnel explorers known as Video. There is a nice tribute to Mullet, a tag from Big Ears and more. This area is well lit from the manholes and the grille. The grille it's self is just before the main RCP branch tunnel that heads north. Further on we came across a smaller tunnel on the right.

Approach to the Grille in the drain, a major landmark.	At the Grille, the smaller RCP on the left, the main tunnel on the right.

From the grille tunnel splits into two tunnels, a RCP to the left, and the main concrete tunnel to the right. To gain the best experience of the drain you should take the smaller left RCP but be warned, it gets slippery.

Just past the grille in the main tunnel is Troll Town. This is a series of buildings I painted on the wall back in 1999 one time when I was particuarly bored and had been given a whole lot of excess paint. There was also a table concreted into the ground but some sods removed it over summer. Somebody turned some of the buildings into shops, a nice touch.

From the grille near the park (the one in the pictures above) the RCP tunnel heads north. There are quite a few manholes to light the way, but be warned! This tunnel is one slippery little sucker (and that's no grape!). If you really want to you can keep your shoes dry for most of this tunnel's length you can but there's an interesting little room about 16 minutes in that requires a bit of a crawl this is the Crossover. About 3 minutes further along the tunnel is another grille. This grille is right by the rail line. It would be handy if there was a few bars missing in that grille but at least there's a manhole another 20 meters on, um in the middle of a road.

4. Crossover. This is one of the most unusual features of any tunnel system though it is not apparent when you pass through unless you go via the RCP. In the RCP this point is marked by a short section of crawl. In the larger main tunnel this is marked by a chamber with slanted walls, short one with bluestone at the base and concrete at the top. This chamber is relatively free of graffiti. If you're riding a bike it's best to leave it here because it gets slippery from here on. This feature is unique in the city. Why the tunnels were built this way is unknown.

5. Alf Sadlier Graffiti. On the left hand side of the main tunnel just below a manhole, surrounded by newer gold paint is the mark of the near legendary Alf Sadlier. This man worked building a lot of the city's drains in the 1940's and was perhaps the first person to explore the city's drains. Another fine example of his tag can be seen in Sloth's

Just on from here you may spot a new grille in the roof of the tunnel. It lets in a lot of air and light but is unmovable.

6. The Confusion Chamber. The Main rectangular tunnel, now narrower, continues on from the Crossover chamber till it eventually ends in two RCP tunnels, one leading straight on north, another leading to the right around a curve to the east. This tunnel soon changes into a slippery mummy tunnel which in turn changes into another RCP tunnel. A bit on from this there's a nice section of tunnel where 3 closely spaced manholes let light into the tunnel, lighting up a section about a hundred meters long. Eventually (about 40 - 45 minutes walk from the entrance) the tunnel comes to the first junction where the RCP tunnel meets with it.

This is the confusion chamber, so called because on the way back there can be some confusion as to which tunnel you came from when you return. Two tunnels enter from downstream and two leave upstream a RCP and a rectangular tunnel. The rectangular tunnel it's self splits into three more tunnels, two leading off to the south east which are crawlers and one heading off roughly east.

7. Upstream chamber. From this chamber a RCP pipe on the right curves off eastwards. Although I have not explored far into it myself, rumor has it that it is a shrinker and not really worth exploring. The floor of this tunnel is particularly slippery.

8. 3rd Junction Chamber. This room has two upstream tunnels exiting it, both RCPs. You can hear it for some time before you get to it. Note that the section of RCP after the mummy tunnel is very slippery! The RCP on the left is almost always smelly. Water from this tunnel drops about 1.2 meters into the chamber in a mildly loud waterfall. The Right RCP eventually leads to the Wall, the end of this tunnel system.

Other Points of Interest

The Southern Tunnel

In addition to the big main rectangular tunnel the drain also has another long tunnel system that is little explored. The Southern tunnel system marked in purple on the map goes at least as long as the Main tunnel. It in fact goes under the railway line at Patterson Station. It then heads south east under South Road and the Moorabbin Reserve.

Read more about the Southern Tunnels here

Tunnel of Doom.

This tunnel leaves the main Northern tunnel about 100 meters past the Grille. It can be heard as water from it splashes into the main tunnel. The entrance is a rectangular section that quickly slopes up to a 2 meter RCP. It is now painted as a video shop window!

The tunnel has only 2 really interesting features. The first of these is a strange gutterbox thingmy on the tunnel's right some way in and a manhole very close to the railway station.

4. Northern Tunnel. This is the RCP tunnel that leads northward from the main tunnel. This tunnel extends north under North Road where it becomes a bit of a stoop.

1999. The Northern tunnel in fact continues after a 4-5 minute stoopy bit to a new but small grille room and a large new unexplored tunnel section. This heads due east from the new grille room. Also from the new grille room a low rcp heads up through a series of pits and eventually ends under the car park at another railway station where there is a largish sized room.

5. Two small RCPs. These two small RCPs lead from the Confusion chamber towards the south east. They have been explored by the Guinea Pigs team but have been described in very unflattering terms; in other words, they're crap. (their words, not mine)

6. North East Tunnel. This RCP, of the same size as the first side tunnel (about 1.8 - 2 meters) is the left tunnel leading from this chamber. It is noted for the thick layer of slime along it's bottom which makes it very slippery. It curves roughly towards the south east.

Expo Report

I've been down the drain several times so this expo report is a bit of a conglomerate of several of them.

Recently I pondered down this drain with Emor a couple of times. Both trips were unique and fun. The first trip we did the main Northern tunnel all the way to the wall while the second trip we explored the Southern Main tunnel where we found a nice pile of cash.

The day was sunny enough so we wandered in to the entrance of the big tunnel. This was a fairly pleasant tunnel, being big, wide and with an easy to walk along floor. They just don't make drains like this any more.

We made our way up to the little mini-slide (Main point 2 on the map). The second time Emor and myself happened by this place we noticed light shining in from a side pipe. We're getting into the crawling stage of drains now where we'll quite happily crawl down almost any pipe wide enough to take our selves. At the end of a short 5 meter long pipe we came to a very dirty and neglected junction box which looked as though it had once been a gutter box. We climbed up the ladder to peer at the traffic on some road and noticed that the concrete lid was a bit crumbled and unmovable.

There is a heap of graffiti in this tunnel but it soon peters out. The tunnel has some interesting Clan graffiti in it all the way to the Grille at the park. This by far has to be one of the most graffiti covered tunnels I have ever seen. Plenty of stuff from locals in the entrance but once you get past the first small slide / station on the main tunnel the graffiti drops off for a while. There is however some interesting and continuous narrative on the left hand wall.

When I visited the tunnel with my brother we had a problem at the grille because we could hear some kids yelping above and could see their feet hanging from above. Not wanting to miss an opportunity handed to us on a plate we started our best monster sounds which echoed through the tunnel. Growls, barking and banshee wails almost deafened us. To our annoyance the kids stayed put and obviously yelled out to other kids that there was a monster down the drain! We quickly walked under the grille, yelling "Boo!" up at the kids before continuing down the drain, making more animal and monster sounds. We could hear them for some time saying; "there's a monster down the drain, we saw it!" In answer to our reason for going down the drain, the grille is at the Park, near a road

I was keen to try this trick again with Emor, and his second visit to this drain we were rewarded with the sound of a child above. We started making quiet noises of animals such as dogs and cats barking and hissing. Then we started with the monster noises. The voices went away for a while but returned soon. We then heard the kid say: "There's a dog and cat down there." and both Emor and myself had to stop ourselves from bursting out with laughter.

One of the most pleasant things to do in a drain is walking it by candle light. This should be done only in drains that are well ventilated. Placing a candle in a small container which floats (such as an spray can lid) you can float the candle down the drain. In most drains the candle will move downstream at slightly less than walking pace. It will generally let off more than enough light to walk by. It's quite a nice effect. The best drains to do this in would be big ones.

Recently Emor and I again explored the drain, just to escape the city's oppressive heat. As we inspected a new grille in the tunnel we heard a roar from further up the tunnel. This sound was the sound of water from the northern RCP dropping over the 3 step mini waterfall. Expecting a wall of water to rush down the tunnel we ran back down to the Grille and clambered up to the ledges and awaited the flood. It took six minutes or more till the rush of water arrived. There had been no rain that day, the water was muddy brown, probably drained from a large pool, a building site or most likely, the dam at Caulfield racecourse. This is the second time this has happened while I was in the drain.

The water rushed pass below us while we waited above on the ledges, eating ice cream. Eventually the water level dropped and we decided to walk out. We spotted some cool looking green gas in the tunnel as we dropped down to the wet floor. On our way out we placed a candle in a used ice cream container and walked out by candle light. This is one of the best tunnels to do candle lit tours in.

The ebbing flood water and green gas in the drain.

Warning! Do not explore drains! In large drains systems it is possible to become lost. Your flashlight may not last long enough for a safe exit to be made. When the darkness comes the bogey man will come to get you. Flash flooding can also occour much easier in large drain systems like this.

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