In the 80s when the Belconnen offices were built they were designed for government departments that had much higher levels of paper consumption such as the tax office and department of statistics. They were built with an extensive network of tunnels underneath that connected to large waste paper hoppers in strategic locations in each building. The tunnels were all about three feet wide, connecting together to meet at a massive paper shredding machine in the sub basement of the building immediately to the West of the bus interchange. The paper was sucked through the tunnels at about 60klms/hr by huge extraction system and a series of opening and closing sluices gates. It emerged at the top of a giant extraction cyclone, where the paper fell into a massive hopper and then through a chute into a huge rotary shredder, then out into a bailing machine, along a conveyor belt to a hoist where it was raised up and trucked away for recycling/disposal.
The shredder was absolutely massive, with a multi-tonne solid steel drum rotating at high speed, with hammer heads hanging off it in a spiral along its length that would simply tear anything apart that fell into it. I remember in our induction being told that it would eat a railway sleeper whole in a split second and having worked on the machine I have no doubt it was true.
The shredder was so large that it consumed a huge amount of electricity and took a considerable amount of time to start up and slow down, from memory about 20min to slow down an an hour to get back up to full speed. It was designed back in the day when Canberra itself was a federal project and got it's electricity for free from the Snowy Hydro Scheme and energy consumption was less of an issue. It did however suck so much energy that they could only run it at night when the rest of the offices were shut down.
The biggest problem with the whole system was when it rained heavily and some of the pipes would flood, particularly the ones that went under Benjamin Way and other roads. The other problem was people throwing unwanted items into the hoppers that were big or angular and became lodged. I recall finding some strange things, like old typewriters, which we only new about by the noise of them being sucked through and the keys scattered through the ensuing one tonne paper bail. Occasionally a new kid in a department would throw something really weird down a hopper that would get stuck just for fun or as a prank, a toilet bowl and a car sump, leap to mind as examples. We would have to go and unclog the hopper or the pipe below it.
We accessed all the buildings through a range of underground tunnels and service ways, rarely if ever emerging above ground except to cross Benjamin Way. A number of these tunnels had air-vents and emergency exits in odd places around the office buildings that I exited through once or twice.
When the pipes themselves got clogged particularly from rain it could be a real problem. the system had a super-sucker that we could turn on first, ramping up the suction speed to something like 90klms/hr. We could, turn this on and off using sluice controls to nudge/suck blockages through. I remember the change in air pressure when a blockage finally was sucked through and a massive lump of a tonne or two of sodden paper would crash down into the turbine hopper and hit the shredder, and the change in tone as the massive motor dealt with a few seconds of increases strain, leaving nothing but a slightly sodden and occasionally overweight bail at the end. We would occasionally have to leave a bail to dry out so we didn't overload the hoist.
Mostly we managed to fix clogs either through the super sucker or else through wandering through tunnels and poking long sticks down the hoppers. We always worked in a shift of two or three people (depending how busy) with one of us watching the shredder and bailer while another wandered off exploring the maze of underground tunnels and access ways to clear blocked hoppers. I have fond memories of hours spent wandering through the massive array of backup batteries under the department of statistics, used to power the huge rooms of reel to reel machines and super computers that were hermetically sealed and we got to see into but never enter.
When all else failed though and there was a major clog that the super sucker could not clear, particularly under Benjamin Way, then we would have to actually enter the pipes and slide down and unclog by hand. To do this we had a small curved trolly on a long rope. We would open an inspection hatch and using a head torch, lie on our back sliding down the tunnel to where the clog was, grabbing buckets full of mush and being pulled back up to dump it and lowered back down again. Usually the blockage was a combination of mush and a few large solid items that once half cleared the super sucker could then clear totally.
Entering those tunnels was a frightening experience and I'm still a bit claustrophobic I think from this. The most frightening thing was the idea that someone might turn on the super sucker while you were down there and you would be sucked at 90klms/hr into the hopper before being shredded in a split second.
Of course we had a 'protocol' that the machine had to be fully shut down, and all sluices closed and diverted before anyone could enter a pipe, but I certainly recall that we would occasionally simply leave one of us to divert the suction to other hoppers while others went down to clear the pipes. I don't really recall why we were that reckless, except perhaps that we could only go home once all hoppers had been cleared and a complete shut down and restart took so long and involved messaging the boss at 2am to tell him the bad news and facing his wrath. I recall he was the first person to get the contract to run the machine after the government privatised the operation, and he was I think making a roaring profit but always trying to cut costs at the same time.
No one lasted long in the job as it was smelly, oily, unbelievably loud, dark dank and at times claustrophobic. I reecally working with a junkie who scared the crap out of me on a few occasions, one when i found him inside the pre-shredder hopper clearing some computer reel tape that had become clogged in the cyclone, without having shut the machine down! He was mad as a cut snake, the only time I hit the emergency shutdown break that set off an alarm, slammed a grill over the shredder and got the boss there within minutes followed by the police.
One of the crzaziest and weirdest jobs I have ever done...
Anyway i just thought this story might provide an addition to discussions I have seen online about hidden tunnels under the Belconnen offices..,. I know they exist, cause I worked in them
