Anyway, last century (yes, really!) I was this kid that used to ride around on my push bike down the Yarra in this big old city called Melbourne. This was because we were poor and could not afford x-boxes or the Internet back then (and they had not been invented either). So one day we were riding down the river and found this MASSIVE tunnel heading down under a road. It didn't seem to come out anywhere either. So we rode our bikes in the entrance as far as we dared. Then later on we got torches and explored it more. This was back in the 1970s folks. Yes, 40 years ago. I told you I was old. This drain was huge, you could have driven a bus down it. To us kids it was a massive underground maze. We were lucky not to get drowned out in flash floods as we explored it. Later on, it was nicknamed Anzac.
Anyway, ever since then I had an interest in drains. I didn't know it at the time but I am Autistic and yeah, apparently we have weird hobbies and tend to get fixated on them. So yeah, I wanted in on the drain scene.
Later on we moved, and one suburb across from me other drain explorers were getting out and about. Some of them even went to my school. I ended up joining the Cave Clan and boy was I an eager bastard. "Tell me where all your drains are at! I wantz to explore them!" I must have said a dozen times. Oh yeah, sound familiar? I see all these posts from eager newbies and think "Heck, I must have driven people nuts with my eagerness." I was unemployed or a student at the time so I'd get out five or six days a week exploring drains I found on a list put on the Web by some one, I think it was Diode or Predator. Anyway, eager as all, I'd go off exploring, sometimes 5 or 6 drains in a day and often over 20 a week. Did 100 in just over 5 weeks.
I never did understand why that pissed people off until much later. It's the tourist thing. People put in a lot of effort to find those drains over the years. Then there was me and my mates "exploring" them wholesale with no effort to actually find anything new. It wasn't till years later that I found my first really impressive drain (Labyrinth / Golbourn Darkie) that I realised the pride in finding something like that. I put time and effort into finding it. So then I realised what it feels like to see people just wander off to explore something they found on the Internet with no real effort.
So yeah, I've gone from a keen "All your drains are belong to me!" newbie to an "No thou shalt not have my precious locations" old fart, and can now relate to those that I must have annoyed the heck out of when I was that newbie. So yeah, newbies, keenness is good, but how about you tell us your achievements BEFORE you get to the "Tell me where the drains are at" bit. Now that I'm older, I'm hoping I'm less annoying. Because I'm too old for that crap.
