Originally when we went out to this drain we thought it was another crappy 6 foot shit drain. Typical of some in Urbana. We walked in up to the first room, figured it was another little boring drain and walked back to the entrance. That was back when we had a little Fuji disposable camera. We had to catch the bus back to UE City because we had no access to a car then.
I recall writing something like "Small shit drain, blah blah blah, couldn�t be bothered exploring it much, blah blah blah, not really worth going all that way out there, blah, blah, blah, got my feet wet, blah blah blah, major bumpkin land, blah blah blah."
Then one day some months later with nothing to do we decided to jump on the bus to go down Urbana to check the drain out again because a mate of Josh�s said the drain had a few good features in it. The Drain Mobile � was being used a freind of mine. Kova complained about this, wondering why my dad needed it.
" He�s building another one of those eighty thousand dollar barbecues." I replied.
" Huh" Asked Soneek. "A what?"
" An eighty thousand dollar barbecue, for the politicians of course."
" Shit, no wonder we have so many round abouts in Urbana." Kova exclaimed.
I was confused. I have know Kova for months. Yet I could not follow his logic. I don�t know what barbecues had to do with roundabouts. I asked him what he meant.
"Well we�re spending so much money on barbecues we can�t afford to buy decent traffic lights. Even if we did we couldn�t pay the power bills to keep them running."
Makes sense to me.
So we got to the shit Urbana shopping center which is like an over glorified bumpkin hic two store hole. We followed the drain upstream, past the tyre tracks to the fence which marked out the drain.
Yeah, trees, paddocks, not even a house in sight, not even a road, just tyre tracks through the drain. That drain there, it�s the only sign of civilisation here. No roads, no power lines, nothing. As a matter of fact the drain serves as the only route to small hamlets south of here. What, oh, um, well yes there is a shopping center car park and a Woolworths right behind where we snapped this picture and a major highway about a hundred metres away. But this still looks like bumpkin land.
As can clearly be seen in the picture above this drain has been visited by Pak, probably 2Pak who seems to have visited several other drains in Urbana. The entrance is a double barrel drain, with one extra barrel blocked off. Inside the drain junctions just join the two drains.
We walked into the drain for the second time, waked upwards to the first chamber. Bah, excitement plus we thought - NOT! We walked onwards hoping that whatever �exciting features� were not far down the drain. To our amazement we got our wish!
Not more than a couple of minutes up the drain we spotted light ahead. Wahoo. We were so pissed off that we hadn�t waked up the drain further last time. At the same time we were glad that we had taken the time to double check this drain out before doing this web page. We would have looked so good saying the drain was shit because anybody who had been in it would have thought we were nuts or something.
At the end of the light we came to a HUGE grille room ala the one in Secret Squirrels. Bloody huge 9 foot pipe on the left and three small ones on the right. Like amazing, the two tunnels we were in joined together to become four tunnels. Amazing and completely unexpected. Massive grille, heaps of graffiti and sunlight. It was wicked!
We stood in the drain quite amazed. This room was huge! There was some graf up in really high and seeming impossible places to reach. In the sand in the bottom of the drain we found footprints that had been there for probably only a week at most. We tried to remember the last time it had rained. We scanned the graffiti, mostly tags.
There was a general consensus amongst us that we would explore the big pipe first. Looking into the three smaller pipes we thought they diverged and were like really pissed off because that meant we�d have to go and follow them off on a diverging side tunnel. But up the main pipe we went. It had a little dribble of water in it but after a while this ended. We were in a huge and 100 percent dry drain! We could have gone to sleep in that. The bottom of the drain was bone dry.
We started whistling and singing the Animal Song as we walked up the drain. It didn�t take us long to get to the next chamber where we were happy to see two small drains were still with us. Now I bet you�re like majorly pissed off that there�s no pictures of that stuff. Well we kind of forgot to take pictures of the drain. I seem to recall that as we were using a little black pocket flashlight that we�d have nothing to scale the drain with. It would look just like any other drain.
After we�d gone some way up the drain we came to a small room in the drain. We were pissed off to see the two smaller tunnels were gone but happy that the drain was still big. We walked on, coming to several more of these rooms in the drain, but these had big vents in the ceiling. We could have climbed out any of these but we haddn�t explored the drain yet.
At one of the drain vents we heard voices above. I mean someone was sitting o top of the thing. We pondered what to do. This situation was ripe for some major mischief. We decided to start making strange noises, electing to make train noises.
"Bzzzzzzz, chgnnnn, whoooommmm. Chung!" Then Soneek put on her best UK accent.
" Urbana, Urbana. Platform Two. Train runs express to UA City then stops all stations to State Capital house bunker. Stand clear please. Stand Clear!"
More train noises as we walked off a bit into the drain. We snuck back in silence to listen to the voices of confused people above.
"Did you hear that?" "Yeah, what was it" "Something like a train?" "Yeah, said it was going to Woden. What�s under this thing anyway?" "I don�t know, I thought it was a drain" "Do you think there�s really a train down there?" "Could be. I�d believe anything of this place, but why would it go out here?" "Maybe there�s a secret bunker here somewhere? Hey, is there anyone down there?" One voice yelled.
Kova
held his fingers against his lips then he mumbled something barely audible.
"What?" came the voice loudly.
" Blah b lah blah" Kova mumbled back a slight bit louder.
"What!" Yelled the person louder.
" Scubble, dubble, elling brown meer." Kova replied, now almost a normal voice level.
" What!" The voice yelled again, we could hear them struggling to put their ear to a large vent above us.
Kova jumped up on the step irons, put his face up into the vent and yelled at the top of his voice: " I said stop fucken yelling down here!"
We burst out with laughter then ran up the drain, almost falling over with the giggles.
Up past the three big drain rooms the drain got lower and lower. But each time we reached a room we could see a smaller one further down the drain. We finally called the end to this path when we reached a room which was just high enough to stand up in. The drain continued on in the form of a 3 foot pipe.
We walked back through the drain past all the big chambers back down to the joining chamber where we crossed into the two side pipes to explore upstream. We walked on, and on, and on, past three small cross chambers. We had gone maybe quarter of an hour up this drain and were beginning to think of heading back when we heard the sound of a small waterfall from up the drain. We walked on and soon came to the final chamber. Another big surprise. Once again we came to a chamber where the drain expanded into four pipes.
I have just realised, looking at the pictures here that we forgot to explore one of the pipes of this drain. Go back up there to the picture of the big grille room. Yep, 4 pipes there, it seems we missed exploring the one furthest from the camera. With our luck it probably leads to some wonderful 19 story high chamber with secret government railways. Then again.
Popping drain manholes can be dangerous. You may open a manhole in the middle of a road. You might be hit by a car or have a car get stuck in the drain. There are strict speed limits in drains.
Do NOT enter drains. Read this warning!
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