The stuff we do to find drains.
Google Maps tended to confirm that. So I got into the van and drove. It should have been a 3 hour 45 minute trip. Unfortunatly Google Maps did not cater for slow bastards soing 80 on a 100 zone because they were towing some heavy stuff in a trailer. Nor did it cater for another idiot doing 80 on a highway 100 zone in a perfectly good car. So 5 hours later I arrived at my destination. I don't speed, but I at least want to stick to the speed limit.
I'd been to the town before, it has some great railway history. So I got there, drove to the location and spotted the drain. In no time at all I was in.
It was a 6 ft shrinker. I'll call it Coota Drain. Because it had no redeeming features other than a couple of non exciting gutter boxes. The drain runs for about 600 metres from a branching of the side creek to a local golf course. It had no graffiti in it other than the local kids stuff. Overall, there was nothing to reccomend it. If it was in a city with other drains it was the sort of drain you'd probably check out if you were there, but not what you'd make a trip to see.
Next I checked out another town. Nothing worth seeing there, and the same with the next one.
In Temora I found a promising looking overground drain that lead to a lake in the middle of a park in town, but nothing exciting leading off of that apart from another open drain.
I didn't find anything worth exploring in Young, Harden or Boorwa either apart from some nice railway relics in Boorwa. I found another shittle drain in a small town that was not really worth describing.
My final drain of the day though was a great one! Almost a kilometre long, 10 metres wide and up to 4 metres high in one place with some interesting brick work, construction markings and a nice side gutterbox on to a main street of the town. Best of all, despite its huge size, there were no graffiti markings from past drain explorers. There was also a weird section where rusted metal girders were supported by wooden beams that had not been in place the first time I explored the drain back in 2012.
I snapped plenty of pictures this time and should try to find some place to host them.
On my way out of that town I found another drain, totally unexpected for a rural town. This town (okay technically it is a city) had two good drains! This second one was about half a kilometre at the most and totally straight except for a curve at the end.
The town also has some good old mining relecs and industrial ruins. If I had more time I would have chcked them out too.
On the trip back, I was running out of light so I decided to take a short cut. It ended up being 145 kms of shitty back roads, dirt road, blind corners and not much to my surprise, I encountered a couple who's car lost its trailer off the side of the road. I stopped to offer first aid, but no one was injured. I alsoencountered suicidal kangaroos that seemed to think headlights were a great target to hop straight for. I slowed down and blasted my horn at a few, and thankfully all managed to get out of the way so I went on my way and arrived home just in time to watch Star Trek.
So yeah, about 1000 km of driving and 4 drains to show for it.
Got an email I can send some to?Mambo wrote:Pics or it didn't happen.
Use Imgur, or Tinypic etc to link your stuff here.
Just a harmless explorer. No need to waste taxes checking me 
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More to come...
Just a harmless explorer. No need to waste taxes checking me
Those pictures are from the main tunnel I explored. It started out as a 4 way split, then merged and split several times. Note the wooden pillars holding up old rusted beams.
The drain also had electrical cables in the ceiling in some bits.
It leads into a sort of useless space with a dirt floor. I came prepared this time with a shitty little home made wooden ladder of dubious craftsmanship / strenth. All I needed was enough height to allow me to peak. I had my suspicions of what it would be given that I'd seen the floor plans of the building above it.Dynamite wrote:Did you manage to get a peek inside the 'Tunnel of Doom?' or is it too high up?
Welcome.PanicUE wrote:Thanks Edge.
I've made pic 8 public on my account. That one is my favourite. I'll try and get the rest up later now I'm back from OS.
Just a harmless explorer. No need to waste taxes checking me
I almost thought pic #1 was a drain near me.
There's a canal to drain entry that looks just like that with the exception that there are only two openings.