Eastern Expo
I recently joined Emor and ID in an expo to six drains in the Eastern Suburbs

Like most of our expos, this one was arranged just a few days earlier via the phone. The weather forecast was another of those optimistic ones, sunny with clearing cloud. No mention of rain, yeah, like hell there was no rain! I mean it's nice to be optimistic when forecasting weather, but how about some reality? We can take it!

We met at a railway station and romped off to do Dwellers. Emor was very annoyed that his camera flash didn't seem to be working. We strode along the path by Gardiner's creek and watched some fella looking for golf balls in the weeds. Arriving at the drain we proceeded to climb down the bank.

" Don't fall down the side." I warned Id before sitting down on the grass and sliding half way down myself.

" I thought you said not to fall down the side." Emor replied at my slip.

There was some more banter before we reached the bottom. Id fiddled with his video camera before we wandered in, getting our feet wet. Amazingly, though the water was cold no one bothered to complain about it. Just in the drain we heard a churning noise. I talked Emor into climbing up this small side pipe to peer through the hatch there. He didn't seem too happy about it. I don't know why, it looked fascinating the last time I saw the side drain through it.

We walk on. I spotted a small fish in the drain. The other two could not see it as every time I shone my flashlight at it, it moved. I traded places so Emor could get a look at it. Eventually we reached shallower water and picked up the pace.

We came to the small chamber with the side pipe and read some of the grafitti in it. There was some amusing stuff but I can't remember any of it. We sat a while, and took photos and shot video. We walked on and on, trying a couple of side tunnels with no exit. We eventually came to the split. At this point we were a bit worried as all of the side pipes started to drip water and we had spotted clouds above when we went in. So when we reached the split we were a bit anxious. We soon forgot this though as we admired the old 70s graffiti in the old redbrick section of drain.

Id did a good slip and we panicked at the though of the camera hitting the ground or drowning, it was okay though. We had a good look at the graffiti before trying the small side pipe. This was a great source of entertainment! Oh how something so trivial can be so much fun. We crawled up here and peeped out the gutterbox, relived to see the weather had cleared up and there was no rain. We sat and rested, tried to heave open the hatch and then eventually continued on our way.

We popped a manhole here and worked our way back overland to the car.

Driving to Chadstone we topped up on paint and purchased a few easter eggs and glow in the dark stones. (plastic really)

Arriving at Freeway reserve we parked and wandered around looking for a drain. I asked an old man if he knew of any drains there but he didn't. I figured it was close to the main road so we wandered off there and spotted a grille set in the ground. We heaved this up and popped on in. Emor let the grille bang back down and we looked around. There were some choice words said to vent what we felt about exploring little low drains. Bah! I hate stoopy drains!

There was light at the end so we walked up to that and were amazed by a big grille room sort of thing with two sections. This was amazing. So we climbed all around in it and tried to get the grilles on top off. Nothing doing. So we wandered back to the manhole. We were not happy at the idea of exploring a stoopy drain so I volunteered to explore downstream a bit. I soon came to where it gets bigger and stood up much to my back's relief. Oh, ow!

Id and Emor joined me and we looked at the small chamber. There was remarkably little graffiti in it, just some stuff from Cro and Bob.

Emor, being the person he is, loves pain (his words, not mine) decided to crawl up a mud filled side pipe only about 30 cms across. While he slid on in Id and I painted the soles of his shoes red. I was most annoyed that this paint washed off later. Emor grunted and complained away as he worked his way through the mud. Id and I painted the side of the drain with a few weird and strange messages relating to Emor's chances of getting through the drain. Emor eventually crawled out the end of the drain and ran back to the manhole before joining us in the drain again.

" Yeah, we should go out here!" he suggested. One look at the putrid mud covered and dripping front of his shirt told me where I would not be going out. With half hearted answers from Id and myself we decided to continue down the tunnel.

I spotted a little side pipe and stuck my dead through it. Oh cool, there was some weird sort of side pipe. I couldn't get in it because there was some bars across it. I crawled out and tole the other guys to take a look. I then discovered that Emor had painted my knees while I was in the side drain!

We walked on south and came to a grille in the top of the drain. To our annoyance and fear it was raining. Not hard but we decided to split. We rapidly walked on up the drain with Emor trying to convince us to use the wimpy side tunnel with mud in it. When we arrived at it he discovered that we had painted it red, still, he insisted on doing it again. Id and I went on to the grille and popped out rapidly. I got a great pic of Id grinning like mad, still having fun even though we were already wet and dirty and it was starting to rain. We ran through the spitting rain to the car.

Emor went off to find a hose to wash off with. When I saw how wet he was I demanded that he jump up and down to dry off a bit. He then proceeded to do a few dance steps and a light jig. After he jumped up and down a bit I let him in the car after putting a towel over the seat.

We drove to the northern end of the car park, up onto the grass and over the levee to take a photo of Rambo. After I took the car back to the car park we returned to the entrance of Rambo to take a closer look at it. Id painted a line at the water level in the drain. In a matter of minutes water had passed this level and risen about 10 cms. We sat in the lee of the drain entrance as the rain dripped on down and the water level in the drain itself rose. Eventually the rain stopped and we walked off to take a look at Exit. We made sure we waited a safe amount of time before doing this.

The water level in this drain dropped as we sat there. We waited a bit more to be safe then entered. We walked on in, took a look at the split, the big side gutter box and the end chamber before popping out the manhole back near the entrance. At the top of it were a bunch of people playing archery in the park. They looked at us with one of those 'what the heck' looks.

As I was the last one out I turned to the manhole and said: "Okay guys, it keeps on going. Go up to the next bus stop and we'll meet you there."

As we walked away, waving to the archers, one of them, a teenager, went to look down the manhole. Archery was suddenly no longer interesting.

With the rain stopped for the day we went off to look for Underpass. We found the southern exit of Fall first so went in that. After a while we spotted some of our tags from the northern end so we looked for an exit. I saw a tiny side pipe and volunteered to climb up it. Big mistake.It was tiny. I ended up sliding my leg under my belly as I got in (kicking Emor in the process) and sliding along on my leg. I found the grille to be moveable so I called Emor who joined me in this tiny gutterbox like thing. With some effort we heaved the grille off and then I slid back into the pipe to help ID.

" Don't put my bag in the water!" I yelled to Id. "Okay." He yelled back. I got down the tunnel to see that my bag, with my $700 camera was sitting in the water in the bottom of the pipe. Fortunately it was also in a plastic bag in the main bag so it stayed dry. I didn't know this yet, but I helped Id up into the side pipe. This wasn't easy as the pipe was tiny and slippery. Two tries did the trick and with me backing down the tunnel, scratching my leg on some stones the two of us slid down the pipe. At the end I couldn't get out because some flashlight was in the way (I said it was a tiny pipe). I had to wait for Emor to get it out of the way then scraped my knees crawling backwards out of the pipe. Id soon joined me and we climbed to the surface and thankfully replaced the grille.

Next we did Underpass. Avoiding some really old fogies we entered the drain and were surprised to spot the lid from a can we had dropped upstream. We headed into this big drain, glad to be in a big one for a change. Around the first bend we found a few plastic money cards which we claimed, not that we'd ever use them, but they can be fun. We wandered to the end of this short drain and were greeted by a big huge pit!

Ahh, that looks slippery I though. And it was too. I tested how slippery and decided that perhaps we should go back. Emor tried a side pipe which we thought might be an exit, but not so. Back at the pit we looked at it and weighed up what to do. You see the pit was only waist deep, but it had an angled slippery floor and all the water was going into this tiny hole which ran under the canal above, once you fell into that you'd never be seen again.

I decided to risk clambering down, stepping onto a small projection. I made it down with only a minor slip and stayed dry. We worked well as a team to ferry our gear to safe land before the other two tried it. Emor wisely advised me to stand where I would block anyone from slipping into the tiny outlet. Id was second to try the pit. He successfully navigated it and joined me at the bottom. Next came Emor.

I remember thinking; "If anyone's going to fall over it will be him." Not that Emor's stupid, or slow or anything. I mean he generally explores more of the difficult side tunnels and will go some places I won't. Its' just that he's better at falling over than any of us. Sure enough, half way down Emor went to turn around then fell over. He slid down on his side into Id and my legs, almost knocking us over. For a moment he was silent then we all started to laugh. I though; " I'm laughing, I'm laughing. I'm going to loose my grip. I better grab this grille so that way if he goes down the pipe, I can just jump up an he won't take me with him." Id also was thinking these types of thoughts.

After a few seconds of lying in the water Emor got up and the three of us climbed up the dry part of the pit to the grille which we climbed through. We had to laugh, even Emor at this. It had been very funny and not really scary so we sat on the side of the canal and giggled away. I put a pipe over the pit to aid future travellers.

After walking the long way back to the car, we drove back to the pit, where se spotted four teenagers. It turned out they were friends of Emor. They did the usual 'wow, you're drain explorers - oh my god, worship worship' thing. "Oh yeah, we've been in this drain, yes we know where Nazi (the next drain - and no, I don't like it's name either) is. Oh we've seen Ash's big hair and so on." Then they borrowed our paint and proceeded to empty a can by spraying tags over the bottom of the canal. We were not happy with that.

But they took us to the next drain, took a photo of the group and did some more amusing comments before borrowing ID's can to do another huge tag. " Hey mate, can I borrow your can.... Shhhhhhhhhtttttttt!" Another can half emptied.

We wandered into the drain and Emor waited a bit until he apologised for knowing such people. We had a good laugh though. Still, in all they were okay.

We came to the huge waterfall chamber. Wow. I was stunned. It was great. Very big, looked stunning, great feature. You must see this! It was just amazing. We climbed up the waterfall and looked around the chamber. After overcoming the wonder of the chamber we looked down one of the six small RCPs to the grille room at the end. The grill was really low, so you could not stand up, plus we were ankle deep in water so we could not sit down. We groaned and complained before making our way back to the entrance of the drain and eventually the car.

It had been a long day, sixteen hours worth of exploring drains, visiting six drains that none of us had been to before. We debated visiting two more but we were too hungry so we drove home via McDonalds (and a fun time mixing up orders) and a seventh drain which we had already explored several times.

Once again well feel it is prudent to warn you that this web site is not intended to encourage you to explore drains. The exploration of drains by inexperienced people may lead to death and injury.

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