More from
Lifelounge's Dirty Edition...
“As a youth starting secondary school in the early 80s, I was surrounded by friends that were eagerly awaiting their first confrontation with school girls in short dresses. Other students were nearly peeing their pants while the cool ones were smoking cigarettes in “smokers corner” with older friends or brothers. Not me. I had been dreaming of exploring the Northcote Tech Darkies, a 1.5m high stormwater pipe… We entered the tunnel, only as naive children with a sense of adventure possibly could, without a torch and not knowing what lay ahead. Soon we reached The Bend and the tunnel went into darkness. I loved the smell of the concrete and the spooky sound of the echoes. A scream by one of the party saw the three of us running blindly through the pipe, slipping over, getting wet, screaming and laughing uncontrollably. We came torpedoing out of the pipe and I slipped down the ten metre slide out the front of the tunnel grazing my knees and elbows. I stood up and looked at myself, my brand new school uniform, wet, ripped and covered in sludge and blood. I looked back up the slide and saw my two friends looking a little bit less ruffled, but not much. We all started laughing again... I was hooked!”
The city’s tunnels and drains are a network of man-made concrete and brick infrastructure – a central nervous system – built to keep our city clean and not designed for human inhabitation. The entrances to these drains represent a mystery posing more questions than answers for the adventure-bound among us. What’s inside and where does it end? Only a few venture beyond this thought. To the Clan however, the ‘exploration of the unknown’ is what their collective is built on, after all what could be more rewarding than knowing you’re part of a select few that have been and seen what others haven’t and probably never will?
The Clan began by exploring mines, caves and then storm water drains. These days, they have explored just about every type of artificial tunnel and chamber there is; bridge rooms, gas pipeline tunnels, purification tanks, disused sewerage discharge tunnels, dams, and many tunnels and cavities under Victoria that can’t be named. They’ve also grown to have members and divisions throughout not just this country, but the whole world.
Puzle met with Cave Clan founder, and top tunnel rat, Doug.
P: Can you give me an insight into how the whole Cave Clan organisation originated and what your role was?
D: I always had an unquenchable taste for finding tunnels. At primary school I heard there was a drain under the school so I’d climb under a portable at lunchtimes with friends and dig away. When I hit my early teens I made a few attempts to start up groups that would explore mines, drains and tunnels. This would very rarely work because none of them had the obsession that I had. I met up with a school friend, Woody, one weekend during the summer of 1985/6 and went exploring with him. He used to bring his brother, Sloth, along. The three of us laid the foundations over the summer by exploring whatever tunnels we could find. We were restricted by not having cars so we lead towards urban tunnels as apposed to caves.
P: Are there any other tunnel-exploring collectives aroundthe world?
D: There have always been groups of explorers around the world – most we will probably never hear of. Paris has a massive scene of Catophiles who explore the quarries and catacombs under Paris. As far as I know Cave Clan was the first group to expand or go out of their way to explore outside of their own area. The internet has seen the rise of many dozens of groups, many of them are very ‘professional’. Minneapolis has a large drain scene and the UK’s is growing thanks to people like Jondoe, who has been described as the ‘father of UK draining’. Drain exploring (which pretty much includes exploring of any artificially made tunnel) is considered part of the Urban Exploration scene, and by all means it is, however it’s generally much more hardcore than say, exploring abandoned buildings, where most people consider taking a photo of peeling paint as a sign of a great explorer.
P: How did the name come about? Were there a list of names or did it just stick?
D: It came about over a few drinks one night. In hindsight we should have went with the Drain Rats or Tunnel Terrors or something. As a whole, we are actually not that big on caves. We were going to go with The River Jumpers for a while… luckily that one didn’t stick.
P: How did the C/C logo with a lightning bolt originate?
D: It happened the same night as we came up with the name. I can’t remember whether one of us came up with it or it was a group effort. If it was anything to do with AC/DC then that may be why I my memory refuses to reveal the fact.
P: I remember the C/C logo on the entrance of most Melbourne drains, was this used as a marker or symbol that it had been explored?
D: I’m not sure if that is why it was done originally. I think it was done more in hope that there were other groups out there that would come to know the emblem. Nowadays members of the Clan will just presume if it doesn’t have a C/C emblem or Cave Clan written in it, that they are the first Cave Clan person to explore it. This is usually not the case.
P: Is it true that C/C magazines were left in drains for other explorers to find and contact you if needed?
D: Not as a rule. I may have left a few copies here and there. When I was in the catacombs under Paris I left a few around. We used to have things called Message Bags back in the 80s. The consisted of some photocopied photos of drains, a few locations, and a cassette with us bullshitting about drains. We would hang these up on laddered manholes for other explorers to find. The message bag would contain instructions on where to go to leave a message arranging a meeting. This is how the Clan grew before we had a PO Box. We had such a great success rate of getting good members. It was a hell of a lot harder to travel to our local drain, leave a message with a date to meet, then return and hope that we had found your message in time. The PO Box made contacting the Clan easier.
P: Is there a rating system of members, how does it work or is everyone on equal level?
D: Nothing official. There are the obvious hardcore explorers that win the Most Hardcore Awards at the Clannies (Cave Clan’s annual awards night) or the Golden Torch Awards. There are explorers such as Siologen (siologen.net/pbase) from Sydney and Dsankt (sleepycity.net) who have done some crazy fucked up shit. They, among a few other Clan members, have done some full-on stuff with explorers all over the world. They have done so much to bring the whole scene closer together. There are the people that do a lot of the setting up and planning – these are the people that keep the Clan going. Without them there would be no Clan. Then there are the people that do nothing except come to expos or events – but they are not considered any less for this.
P: I believe the Cave Clan has now extended to members and divisions all over Australia and in other parts of the world?
D: Thanks to the work or Siologen, Dsankt, Nivelo, and another half a dozen or so, there are Cave Clan associates all over the world. The world scene would be another whole article.
P: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found down there? Surely, a dead body?
D: I don’t think I’ve heard of any Clan member actually finding a body. Not much stays in the drain for long so you don’t really find much. One guy quit the Clan and set up his own little memorial in honor of his quitting in a well-known drain – it was the coolest thing he’d ever done during his time in the Clan. Stolen cars that would be stripped a bit more each time you visited. A safe that had been busted open. I’m sure there is more, but nothing as full-on as a body.
P: I presume there are many old and new drains all over the entire city. What are some of the cities oldest drains? Do they have distinct features?
D: The Cave Clan was set up to have as few rules as possible. As it grew bigger than we could ever have imagined, a few more rules were brought in. It sucks, but just about all the Clan has some kind of set of rules and one is that we can’t reveal locations to the media. This limits what I can say in answer to the questions you’ve asked. I can tell you that under the city of Melbourne there are old redbrick drains. The older tunnels are a balloon shape. One system has the remnants of old chains and floodgates. In Melbourne’s inner suburbs there are a lot of bluestone and brick tunnels as well as old concrete pipes. The newer areas and tunnels are pretty much always made out of concrete, but some can be fun with their waterfalls, stairways and seemingly oversized tunnels that join up at regular intervals. When you start heading out to housing estates on the fringe on Melbourne, then you’re looking at concrete pipes with the only interest usually the junction rooms where tunnels join up – very boring!
P: Have you ever been lost and unable to backtrack your original trail? Is it always A to B or are there mazes?
D: No. I doubt if anyone from the Clan would have been, but there is a situation where people get sucked in. When you check out a tunnel for the first time, especially one that is unknown to the Clan, you head up as far as you can, for as long as the tunnel is interesting, then you think, “I’m so far up, it’ll be easier to just find a manhole.” So you continue on. Generally the tunnel gets smaller the further you go, and the entrance gets further away. Next thing you know you’re crawling through a little pipe wishing you had turned around when you first considered it. Most times you will find a way out via a manhole (the best feeling EVER) but sometimes you have to give up and head all the way back, there have been times where I’ve had to crawl backwards for 20 minutes to get to a section where I could turn around. Once while doing this, my torch died. Crawling backwards though a pipe in the dark is not much fun.
P: Losing your torch in a drain would scare the shit out of me.
D: I’m a really slack explorer, I am in no way ‘professional’. I don’t really want to be. It’s not really what it’s about for me. There are people now that wear waders and have a boot-load of equipment. I am always showing up without a torch and just following the light of someone else’s light, or I buy throw-away torches for $2 and they only last for ten minutes or not at all. It’s not scary if you have a spare, have someone with you, or you know the tunnel. Walking back in the dark is fine as long as you remember what obstacles are in the way. Having said that, the fact is that people should not go in drains – but the ones that do should not take a leaf out of my book. Always take a spare!
P: I presume all the drains have distinct features. Is there a special place you have discovered that stands out above all?
D: I was pretty into searching for the tunnels so I’ve come across lots of really cool stuff. Since moving down to Gippsland, I have been pretty happy with some of my finds because I’m kind of past it as far as the Clan goes. I’m pretty happy with a tunnel called Luminosity that has been bored through rock under a mountain and takes 90 minutes to walk through, however no torch is required due to the large amounts of glow-worms.
P: The coolness and smell (it’s surprisingly not that bad) of the drains is quite distinct, how would you describe it?
D: Usually if there is an unusual bad smell then you may not want to be in there. It’s funny how drain explorers that haven’t been in a drain for a while pretty much all describe the “sweet smelling drains”. The musty air that is relieved by a cool breeze through a gutter from the real world above, the concrete pipe smell, the indescribable smells… they are all fine… until you get drainers in your car with wet shoes. Wet drain shoes and socks, there is nothing like ‘em!
P: How do you feel about the graffiti writer take over of many of the drains’ walls?
D: There has been graffiti in drains prior to the Clan. “Alf Saddlier 1958”, “Nothing Stops A Drainiac – 1966”. One thing I realised after doing drains for a decade was that the Cave Clan were doing more damage to the drains as far as graffiti was concerned. We now try and keep spray-paint down to a one off for each tunnel, and keep all graffiti away from features. Clan graffiti in drains has died right down. There was a period where quite a few well-known graffers got into the Clan. Most of them were in it for the wrong reason. They saw the locations that they found as theirs to do with as they please… they would fuck up the location for any future visits. Their main concern was to get up. I knew plenty of old-school graffers who weren’t like this, but these new guys were shit. Now it’s pretty hard to be a graffitist and be in the Clan – if you don’t put the Clan first then you’re pretty much on the outside.
P: Does the Clan have a claustrophobia rating for members?
D: We have an award called Biggest Coward that pretty much nobody wants to win. But you really don’t want people doing things due to peer group pressure that they don’t feel comfortable with.
P: Do parties in the drains still happen?
D: Yes.
P: Is there mobile reception down there?
D: Some tunnels are just below the ground, some sections are actually above ground level, so there are places where you expect to, and do, get reception. The weird thing is when you’re in an old redbrick pipe and your phone starts ringing.
P: Is there one experience or drain that you could explain as the dirtiest?
D: Some drains are dirty, so they are not visited that often by the Clan. An exception in Melbourne is a tunnel called 69er (It was the 69th drain explored by the Clan, that’s all.) but people still do it because it’s got some really cool old bluestone tunnels. At the end, when people get out, they gather all their filthy socks and decorate a tree or make a sign out of them on the wire fence above the drain. Getting out of drains is usually the dirtiest part. A lot of the biggest drains run under roads so you need to crawl up side tunnels to get out. There are webs and sections where the water banks up. Mind you, you can do most drains and no one would even know, unless you’re wearing waders and carrying a Ghostbusters backpack!