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Tunnel Rats: Urban Exploration in Brisbane
Submitted by news on Wed, Jul 22, 2015 - 5:49pm
For some, the world of derelict offices and abandoned warehouses is their playground. In this story, John Ballot interviews several people about the urban exploration trend, including Bianca Jane (seen above) from the popular Facebook page Abandoned Brisbane.
For most of us, lock picking security doors and climbing 80 flights of stairs just so you can drink a beer on the roof of a 250 metre tall building is not exactly a common hobby. Then again, most of us are not urban explorers.
Urban Exploration, or Urbex, is an adventure sport consisting of small groups entering and exploring the hidden and underground parts of the city.
There are several types of Urbex with exploring abandoned building being the most common, even amongst non-Urbexers. There is also ‘infiltration’, which is when a pair enters a building that is still being used.
Urban climbing, the activity of climbing up cranes and construction sites, is growing in popularity due to the photo opportunities it provides for the social media savvy. The Instagram account ‘rivercity_’ is an example of this, with over 6000 followers revelling in fisheye photos taken from Brisbane rooftops.
In Australia, the most popular Urbex discipline is ‘draining’, the art of crawling your way through the city’s water tunnels. Tim Crandale*, an avid rock climber from suburban Greenslopes, is a well-trained Urbexer and a bit of an adventure junkie. He has climbed up several of Brisbane’s skyscrapers and snuck into dozens of abandoned building. However, he says there is something special about draining.
“It’s really dark, it’s quiet…some were built in World War One… it’s really abstract” Tim said with a smile. His favourite place to explore is Burford’s Bat Cave, a tunnel at the bottom of the Kangaroo Point cliffs.
“Everyone has been to the Bat Cave, and for good reason. If you are looking for the Bat Cave, you will find it … it looks like a natural cave, but eventually changes to brick. It’s very scenic… and it’s great for photos,” Tim said while showing me the photos of his adventures.
The Brisbane Urbex community is relatively small, with about 30 regular explorers. It is secretive and competitive, with explorers stealing each other’s tip-offs’ and one-upping each other by trying to find riskier and untouched places to explore.
I first discovered Urbex through the Facebook page ‘Abandoned Brisbane’. Started by 36 year-old Bianca Jane in 2012, it documents her “missions” into abandoned buildings across the greater Brisbane area. With over 20,000 likes it is the most popular Urbex blog in Australia with a wide range of followers.
Bianca is a quintessentially 90s grunge. When we first met, she was riding her BMX and wearing a Beastie Boys t-shirt. She never thought anyone would be interested in her Urbex photos, and is still surprised by how popular it has become. Though because of this newfound popularity she says she has lost friends in the Urbex community.
“The law of Urbex is you don’t share” Bianca said. While sharing Urbex material with other explorers is frowned upon, sharing with the public is an absolute sin. Because of this, the secretive Cave Clan has exiled Bianca out of the hard-core Urbex community.
Cave Clan, who Bianca describes as “the Urbex police” is the largest and most infamous Urbex organisation in Australia. Started by a group of Sydney teenagers in the 1980s, it now has branches in every state. I attempted to contact Cave Clan multiple times, but they have a strict ‘no-media’ policy ever since appearing on Today Tonight seven years ago.
Cave Clan came into the spotlight in 2008 when Holly Legge and Dwaine Larrosa, two explorers from Sydney, drowned while ‘draining’ a manhole in Lurline Bay. In his findings Coroner Hugh Dillon recommended police investigate the Cave Clan after Michael Malinowski, the sole survivor of the exploration, alleged the group encouraged them to enter underground spaces.
When I first met Tim, I thought he would do draining for the adrenaline kick. He soon started explaining to me how he would research the history of the tunnels, and how he is interested in architecture. It seemed as if he was more interested in documenting the tunnels than any adrenaline high.
Some explorers have more radical views though. Sleepycity.net is an Urbex blog ran by Dsankt. He does not give out his real name, and he did not want to be interviewed for this story. Filled with photos of balaclava-clad explorers, nihilist sayings and anarchist symbolism, Sleepycity.net shows the anti-authoritarianism evident in many Urbexers.
“We are not stupid, we don't like being protected from ourselves, it hurts no-one, we like it, so we do it. Hear us cry... Public access to Public works!!” Dsankt’s Urbex guide exclaims.
Dr Peter Walters, an urban sociology professor from the University of Queensland, says that this anti-authoritarianism is a reaction against cities becoming over-developed.
“In Brisbane, the latest chapter in this [over-development] is West End where all the old industrial areas are being repurposed for high density residential ... there is no affordable housing, there is no diversity built into that, apartments will be very expensive… it is a bit of a disaster” Dr Walters said.
“You can see then why some people resist this gentrification through reclaiming abandoned houses and tunnels… and I think it is great, because by urban explorers putting value back into these spaces they possibly won’t be written off as quickly” he said.
Urban Exploration is a dangerous activity. On any given trip you can run into snakes, asbestos and a myriad of challenges. For Bianca, her greatest fear is wild dogs. During a ‘mission’ to an old mountain resort, her fears came true.
“I came to the front door and I just hear this barking… it was all dark and then I just see these dogs skidding round the back corner… They surrounded me, but I thought to myself that I cant be scared right now” Bianca said.
“I thought I was going to fight for my life, so I picked up this plank and just started screaming and backing away. Luckily I must have frightened them because none followed me,” she said.
For Tim, his greatest fear is drowning. However, he says that you never have to worry about drowning because of the one rule that no explorer will ever break.
“If there is rain, stay away from drains. That’s always the rule. I have never made any exception to that” Tim said. He emphasised this rule throughout our interview, and told me to make sure I put it in this story.
This is not just Tim’s rule. Variations of the rule pop up on all Urbex websites that discuss draining. For the Cave Clan, this is their most important rule and one they describe as “our Golden Rule, and one we strictly follow”.
On March 21st this year, the Brisbane Urbex community was struck with the news that explorer DeScent (his Urbex nickname) was killed when the tunnels he was exploring underneath Eagle Street Pier were flooded in a storm. His partner DarkDay was also caught during the floods, but survived. DeScent was a giant in the Brisbane Urbex community, and very involved in the Cave Clan. Along with DarkDay, he ran the popular Brisbane-Urbex.blogspot page. According to their flickr site, he and DarkDay have explored “over 400 locations”. They claimed to be “fully trained professionals [that] have many years of experience in many forms of adventure sports”.
This is where Urbex starts showing some contradictions and the ‘strictly followed’ rules emplaced by the Cave Clan become fuzzy. Why would someone so experienced and respected in Urbex break the Golden Rule and go into a drain just before a major storm was supposed to hit Brisbane? It did not make sense.
I asked Tim about this, and he says that did not know Cave Clan and DeScent but that he is shocked that anyone would go into a drain when a storm has been predicted.
“There is one rule in Urbex and that is if there is any sign of rain, then don’t go down drains” Tim said.
“You might need to have less of a brain to do Urbex itself, but you would have to have no brain at all to go into a drain when it’s about to rain” he said.
Bianca remembers that March day well. She was just on her way to her local pub to bet on some races when she saw the storm clouds.
“The race was at two, so I started checking the weather at 12. It was going to rain and they [DeScent and DarkDay] went in their at about three in the afternoon. So they were going in as this huge storm was visibly about to hit” Bianca said.
I became obsessed with this. Why would DeScent and DarkDay, two experienced explorers, break all the rules and enter the Eagle Street drain right before a big storm? I tried to contact KTO and Uncle Hagz (two experienced Brisbane Urbexers who were close to DeScent) and asked around on the Cave Clan’s forum, UEGA.net, before I was banned from the site. I posted a Reddit article asking if anyone knows what happened on that day. No answers came out of that, except one Reddit user saying “Its a non talked subject mate [sic]”. In the end, I tried to contact DarkDay, but never heard from her.
Bianca, who has more contact with the Cave Clan, has her suspicions about what happened. From rumours she’s heard, she thinks DeScent and DarkDay were taking greater risks in order to get better photo opportunities.
“Someone has suggested to me that [DeScent and DarkDay] liked taking photographs when there is more water in the drains. So they might have actually gone in to get a photo of it flooding. That would make more sense than them being completely oblivious,” Bianca said.
“You want to know what is happening above ground, and they obviously did. Everyone is being sensitive about it, but DeScent and DarkDay broke all the rules. I guess that is what happens when you get too good. You keep trying to get that thing no one else has seen or experienced. You become Urbex hungry”
*Some names were changed in order to protect identities
On June 29th 2015 the body of Pierre Boutaut, a University of Queensland Foreign Exchange student and member of the UQ Mountain Club, was found at the base of a crane at the 1 William Street construction site. Police suspect his death was linked to urban exploration.
Brisbane City Council and several City Councillors were contacted to comment on draining and Urbex in Brisbane. The Queensland Police Service continues to urge people to stay away from storm drains especially during rainy weather.
Story "researched" and written by John Ballot. If you have any information on this story, you can contact John on johnballot.4zzz@gmail.com
