A Short History of Exploring Tunnels Under Sydney

On the theme of urban exploration, you should watch "Abandoned" on SBS VICELAND on Saturday afternoon, 4:45 PM, or Tuesdays at 10:15 PM.

There's a trail of orange lights that runs along the edge of the tracks. Tim* tells me to watch them, because when they turn off we've got 20 seconds to run into the nearest alcove. The alcoves are 50 metres apart, spaced out specifically so that if people find themselves down here with a train hurtling toward them, there's somewhere to go. Pressed inside the alcove, I watch the carriages barrel past, vaguely aware that it's usually me sitting inside them.

We're in the bowels of St James train station, smack bang in the middle of Sydney's CBD, trying to get access to the much-fabled St James Lake. It's apparently quite an exotic attraction: messages from WWII soldiers are scrawled across the walls, an albino eel has been sighted in the waters. In 2011, it was the set for an indie horror film called The Tunnel.

When St James was constructed, back in the 1920s, they built an extra train platform and over a kilometre of tunnels, with a plan to build another train route through to Randwick. The route never eventuated. At some point one of the tunnels flooded and a lake was formed. The area has a pretty colourful history, having once been used as a mushroom farm, an air raid shelter during WWII, and a swimming hole. Nowadays, the underground lake is a wet dream for urban explorers, rumoured to be more than a kilometre long and five metres deep at some points.

After creeping quietly through the train tunnel for about a kilometre—including a detour where we had to double back along the tracks—we reached another locked gate. "Fuck," says Tim. "This padlock wasn't here last time." Admittedly, "last time" for Tim was just over four years ago, back when he was a more ambitious urban explorer and an occasional graffiti writer. Looks like we're not getting access to the lake tonight. I have to admit, I'm kind of relieved.

Urban explorers and graffiti writers are about as secretive and exclusive as they come. The Cave Clan are by far the most well known group of urban explorers, yet they're also, paradoxically, very mysterious. The crew started with a few Melbourne teenagers in 1987 and they've been sneaking into drains, tunnels, and underground shafts ever since. The group has become progressively more secretive over time. But back in 1990, a 19-year-old dude known as Predator became the leader of Sydney's Clan faction, and went on to write a sort of manifesto on the art of "draining." It's a comprehensive, how-to guide for underground etiquette, with advice on searching out new spots, breaking locks, and basic survival skills.

Predator died of cancer at 33, but his manifesto lives on with those who are brave enough to illegally explore the underground. And Sydney is ripe for it. Central Station also has a couple of disused "ghost" platforms and there are loads of popular drain spots with intimidating names like Tank Stream, Fortress, and the Funnel. People have also ventured into disused military bunkers in Malabar, Mossman, and Bankstown. But even on internet forums, the etiquette is to avoid publicising the locations or the entry points. For anyone interested in urban exploring, the hardest part is finding someone who knows what they're doing to take you on a mission. Someone like Tim.

"The graff crews have knowledge that gets passed down to them," Tim tells me as we walk quickly along the tracks. He lists the monikers for a bunch of Sydney graffiti crews—mostly acronyms like KGB, TGF, and FLS. "But you've got to be dedicated to get in a crew, it's pretty much a full time job." Unlike the Cave Clan, who, if Predator is anything to go by, are more like a secret society of highly educated hackers and anarchists, graff crews are more thuggish. Basically, they're determined to paint trains and ready to go to war with anyone who tries to stop them. In 2013, a member of KGB—one of Sydney's most prolific and serious graff crews—was quoted as saying: "Whether its taking security guards in hostage situations, high speed car chases or being chased through the tunnels by train services trying to run us over, we always seem to dust ourselves off and get back out there."

This is the kind of behaviour Tim was referring to when he suggested that we'd have to rob a train guard to get keys for the gate to St James Lake. Obviously we aren't going to take it that far, but the point is that there are certainly people in Sydney who would. At the end of the day though, Tim's pretty much retired and I'm just a dude writing a story.

Urban explorers and graffiti writers are prone to silence, mostly because the authorities despise them but also because the media doesn't tend to represent them very favourably. In 2008, three young graffers entered a manhole to "Fortress," an underground storm water drain that runs down to Lurline Bay. While they were in there, Sydney got a freak downpour, which caused a torrent of water to flood the drain, carrying them about a kilometre and spitting one guy into the ocean. Sadly, his friends got pinned against the grille at the end of the tunnel and drowned. Despite the fact none of them were associated with the Cave Clan, the group took the brunt of the blame.

A former member of the Cave Clan hit back saying that the group never publishes the details of entry points or locations but it was a message that got lost in the noise of the tragedy. If the Cave Clan weren't already underground, that's the point when they disappeared from public view completely.

The safety of others—people who don't necessarily know what they're doing—is primarily why graffers and urb-ex crews don't share information about their locations. It's common practice for graff crews and urban explorer groups to have initiation criteria, which pretty much always involves a vow of secrecy. Tim isn't associated with any particular crew and I met him online through a friend. He suggested we meet up for a coffee before he committed to anything, which I guess was a screening process of sorts. He's done me a huge favour by taking me down here, risking getting stuck, caught, or worst case scenario, hit by a train.

We trot back along the tracks towards our entry point, which is closer to another inner city train station that I won't name. We talk about getting a beer before catching the last train back to our respective suburbs. Maybe we're getting a bit complacent, because suddenly there's a train in view a ahead of us, and we're running toward the fence, scrambling up it, hoping that there aren't any guards or undercover cops waiting for us on the other side. The train driver sounds the horn—a loud monotonous honk that I can actually feel in my neck—maybe because he's seen us, or maybe it's just protocol for departing the station. But we're on a steel ladder now, swiftly clambering towards public land. And then, just like that, we're two anonymous guys, walking down a street in Sydney's CBD.

*Obviously Tim isn't his real name. Follow Nat on Twitter