File: aquacave.txt Cont: Description of Aquacave, a recently discovered big drain in Bowen Hills, Brisbane, Queensland, by . December 1999 Finally I had my motorbike back from the motorbike shop in Kew NSW (which had the approrpiate name of "Far Kew") and could hit Brisbane again. I met Ogre in his luxury Brisbane apartment an hour earlier than he expected because I forgot to wind my watch back one hour when I crossed the QLD/NSW border, duh, so he was still half-asleep when he opened the door. I said hello to Dirge while I got the blood circulating in my legs again after sitting on the 400cc Predabike for the last four hours... those gloves I found in Charity Creek room (under Victoria Road, Ryde) made excellent motorbikin' gauntlets. Brisbane had turned it on for me again. Rain, that is. I was itching to do this new drain that I'd heard Ogre and Trioxide raving about on the web ring, but it was pissing rain. Dirge hadn't done the power station yet and was headding back to Sydney the following day and wanted value for her Brisbane Railpass dollar. We decided to have another look at the Tennyson Power station. We got off at Milli-Vanilli-Silly-Billy-Yeerongpilly station and trudged out to the powerhouse. We scanned the perimeter for a secluded site where we could enter. Ogre, being the big beast he is, couldn't fit through the tight squeeze which permitted Dirge and I into the sub-basement, and he pulled off a heroic climb up the bars and through a gap four metres off the ground, and also disposed of some chicken wire, before getting in. The place hasn't changed much since I was last there (see: Tennyson.txt) and this time we went all the way to the very top of the roof, in the freezing rain and wind. There was an amusing situation where, at one end of the plant, we looked down at the dwelling where the security guard lives, to determine the whereabouts of the guard dog which was responsible for the dog shit distributed throughout the place. There it was, being fed its bowl of dinner, by none other than the security guard wearing only his black hipster underpants and a wristwatch. Well, there's no likelihood of being busted here, we grinned, and kept exploring until we ran out of light. ** Dirge and Ogre went home to their rooftop party and I got the train to Bowen Hills Station, which is about 250m from the entrance of Aquacave. The entrance is at the corner of Sneyd St and Campbell St, Bowen Hills (Gregorys: 250-F1) down a steep embankment near a Queensland Rail depot. I got there in the dark and it had stopped raining, but the tunnel spewed a torrent down the canal. I weighed it up: it's an unfamiliar drain, probably with a big catchment (turns out it services most of Fortitude Valley so the floating payloads could be unpleasant too) it's night time, the clouds are threatening, and if I go in there and it rains, I'll probably die. Aw, shit. Yes, the threat of death keeps out of drains, but only so he can come back the next day - which, fortunately, was on a bright sunny morning while the tide was out. It made the whole journey worthwhile. Aquacave is the best drain I have explored in Brisbane. It is better than Batcave, better than Brisbane Darkie and One Hundredth, all of which are quite worthwhile drains. Aquacave is long, has lots of interesting rooms, ancient sections and shape changes, a nice loop, and is vertically user-friendly for almost all of its length. The first part, up to the junction, is roughly hacked in a straight line under Sneyd St, straight out of the tuff, with cement-bevelled sloped bottom edges. At other points the tuff has been hewn into large blocks and these make up the walls. At the junction these bevels become too steep to walk on. You have to negotiate a large step to take the right hand fork, and it's loud due to all the water flowing over it. This fork takes you up the 2m concrete rectangular section to a large (6m tall, 20m long, 10m wide) arched red brick room beyond which is another 2m concrete section, which promptly takes you to the grilles, which are probably in Victoria Park someplace and from which I have not heard any reports of an exit without two people to lift them. I went back to the junction and took the left fork. The shape changes to 3m high, moulded concrete with a sloping invert and concreted-in beams in the roof every couple of metres. This converts into a 2.5m old round pipe, which is soon replaced by a welcoming, much older and larger section with its own natural lighting, and what appears to be bluestone block flooring and walls, about 2.5m high by 3m wide. This comes quickly to another junction, the right continuing on as is, the left is a debris-strewn 2m round concrete pipe, similarly well lit. I followed this round one through several small corner rooms, via a room which has a weird pointy-edge-upstream, wedge-shaped steel plate conduit duct, with lifting bolts on top, across the middle of the drain at about waist height. The round tunnel section then comes to a concrete room which connects with the old bluestone conduit section, and also connects to an even older bluestone section 1m wide, 2.5m high (finally they got the height and width the *right* way around!) with eroded bluestone or brick floors, and beveled top shoulders. I frequently placed my foot where I expected floor to be, and only ended up landing at the bottom of a half-metre deep puddle, awkwardly loading my foot or bruising my ankle. This is a old, long, serpentine section, interrupted periodically by 2 x 1 x 3 concrete rooms with new (1990s) manholes and stepirons. It is also interrupted by a strange concrete section 4m high, 1m wide at the bottom half, and 2m wide at the top half. Shape changes galore, and they don't stop there. Some of the bluestone wall sections slope gently outwards, and have these annoying iron cross-bars at chest height every few metres. Once the bluestone-upright segment ends, it is replaced with another shape change, first of the permanent shrinkers - a kind of dished bowl shape with vertical walls and a shallow domed roof. I was conscious of the time and the tide, and after a couple of hours up this excellent tunnel I tagged up on some PVC conduit and headded home via the other side of the bluestone loop. On the way out I noticed the shape of the exit had changed - the dished bottom had been replaced by a flat horizontal line, which means one thing - tide waters... so *that* was where the name came from! I made it to the exit with water almost up to the crease of my butt cheeks, and I was standing on tip-toe for much of the wade out. With wet shoes it is a bit of a scramble to climb up and out of the trench, use the right hand side as you face downstream, and leave happy wet footprints up Campbell St as you return to the rail station. G@tew@y Bridge will need nothing less than a battery powered angle grinder. The bolts are about 12mm dia SS round rod, the site is very exposed and lit at night. , Cave Clan Sydney Branch, 22/12/1999