What is the best drain in Australia?
This question is deeper than you might originally think, mainly because what a "good" drain is varies from person to person. Hailing from Adelaide myself generally means anything above 2 Meters is considered good (hold your laughter please).
However if you're from one of the eastern states like Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane your criteria changes a lot. Drains like your taxes from Sydney, The Maze from Melbourne or Burfords batcave from Brisbane are sure to create some bickering.
However, what if there was a drain that contained almost everything from these drains and put them in one? Rock blasts, mega concrete construction, side tunnels, sandstone and a ripper fucking exit all in one?
Yeah right, I hear you scoff.
Enter Hobart Darkie.
Hobart darkie, or more accurately the Hobart Rivulet, is Hobart's main river. It runs from the hills through to the city and out into the ocean.
It's literally always been there, as the city was constructed around it. It wasn't till 1815 however until the stream became part of the city, with a mill being built to utilise the waterway.
From here, the history becomes slightly murky, however there is a concrete date in the history of the drain is the construction of the second half of it, the domain tunnel running under Queens Domain. As a large plaque will tell you, very politely may I add, this section of the tunnel was finished in 1916.
I believe this photo is most likely some of the first culverting of the canal.
And that's about the only concrete date I have for the construction of the drain sorry! It seems like the rest of it was just slowly culverted on top of.
With history out of the way, I'll get to the meat and potatoes of the report.
~~~~~~~~~
Travelling interstate requires a bit of planning, at least in my opinion it does. In the eyes of close friend and explorer Rahu this couldn’t be further from the truth (I think honestly this is why we got on so well, but that’s unrelated to this story).
After a flight to Tasmania, that was made needlessly long by delays, and a frantic trip to the skybus machine (we had arrived 20 minutes before the last bus) we finally arrived.
Cold, hungry and ready for adventure we set out for Domino’s, plonked ourselves down and munged in. Demonstrating his unpredictability Rahu demanded we walked to the Tasman bridge, something I was honestly not particularly happy about.
As we walked back I made a point of saying that we needed to wait for the day to do the Hobart darkie, as I wanted to see the bridge grille in all it’s glory. As we walked back to our hostel we took a detour past the hospital, and as I did, I froze.
The lights were on in the Hobart darkie.
We rushed back to the hostel, not knowing how the lights operated nor or if they’d even be on the next day.
We rushed back, jumped the fence and began our adventure.
Note the numerous s bends in the drain, it's sort of like a racing track in spots.
An old bridge, now built into the drain.
The aforementioned bridge grille
The storage area for the cat and fiddle shopping centre McDonald's, somehow creeping it's way into the drain.
Another huge section of old drain
Some of the more historic sections, the roof here was redone semi recently.
Another bridge can be seen in the distance
After spending a bit too much time in the Hobart darkie, I began to remember something that Dougo had told me when I had asked him what the best drain in Australia was, his response was domain in Tasmania. I looked at my phone, 2:30 am, I looked at Rahu, “look there’s a drain close to here that’s meant to be really good, but if we do it, no photos. I want something to do tomorrow and we probably won’t come back if we take photos”.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
We marched onwards, through the canal and finally to the two arches, the water in bases of the arches was freezing, Hobart was freezing, I was freezing. We didn’t care. We had a drain to see.
Domain is fucking huge, for lack of a better term, it’s probably the biggest drain I’ve ever done. I didn’t know much about it other than it was big and it had an archway but it certainly has more to it than that, but I won’t spoil what’s down the side tunnels. As the water from the shipyard downstream began to lap lazily into the drain and the water began to rise as we approached the outflow, I noticed a few fish attempting to swim against the tide, we had gotten lucky and it was low tide.
As the lights from the shipyard filled the outflow I looked up, and saw probably the biggest ship I’ve ever seen parked in the causeway into the ocean. Suffice to say, the no photo rule was broken at that very second.
There are few moments that I can struggle to describe the feelings of, but standing in the outflow of domain with the giant plaque one way and the fuck off boat the other is one of those moments, how cold it was, the fish swimming in circles around us attempting to break free of the tide, the to-ing and fro-ing of everyone on the bow of the ship as the got ready to go to whatever faraway place they were going to.
I fucking love drains man.
This question is deeper than you might originally think, mainly because what a "good" drain is varies from person to person. Hailing from Adelaide myself generally means anything above 2 Meters is considered good (hold your laughter please).
However if you're from one of the eastern states like Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane your criteria changes a lot. Drains like your taxes from Sydney, The Maze from Melbourne or Burfords batcave from Brisbane are sure to create some bickering.
However, what if there was a drain that contained almost everything from these drains and put them in one? Rock blasts, mega concrete construction, side tunnels, sandstone and a ripper fucking exit all in one?
Yeah right, I hear you scoff.
Enter Hobart Darkie.
Hobart darkie, or more accurately the Hobart Rivulet, is Hobart's main river. It runs from the hills through to the city and out into the ocean.
It's literally always been there, as the city was constructed around it. It wasn't till 1815 however until the stream became part of the city, with a mill being built to utilise the waterway.
From here, the history becomes slightly murky, however there is a concrete date in the history of the drain is the construction of the second half of it, the domain tunnel running under Queens Domain. As a large plaque will tell you, very politely may I add, this section of the tunnel was finished in 1916.
I believe this photo is most likely some of the first culverting of the canal.
And that's about the only concrete date I have for the construction of the drain sorry! It seems like the rest of it was just slowly culverted on top of.
With history out of the way, I'll get to the meat and potatoes of the report.
~~~~~~~~~
Travelling interstate requires a bit of planning, at least in my opinion it does. In the eyes of close friend and explorer Rahu this couldn’t be further from the truth (I think honestly this is why we got on so well, but that’s unrelated to this story).
After a flight to Tasmania, that was made needlessly long by delays, and a frantic trip to the skybus machine (we had arrived 20 minutes before the last bus) we finally arrived.
Cold, hungry and ready for adventure we set out for Domino’s, plonked ourselves down and munged in. Demonstrating his unpredictability Rahu demanded we walked to the Tasman bridge, something I was honestly not particularly happy about.
As we walked back I made a point of saying that we needed to wait for the day to do the Hobart darkie, as I wanted to see the bridge grille in all it’s glory. As we walked back to our hostel we took a detour past the hospital, and as I did, I froze.
The lights were on in the Hobart darkie.
We rushed back to the hostel, not knowing how the lights operated nor or if they’d even be on the next day.
We rushed back, jumped the fence and began our adventure.
Note the numerous s bends in the drain, it's sort of like a racing track in spots.
An old bridge, now built into the drain.
The aforementioned bridge grille
The storage area for the cat and fiddle shopping centre McDonald's, somehow creeping it's way into the drain.
Another huge section of old drain
Some of the more historic sections, the roof here was redone semi recently.
Another bridge can be seen in the distance
After spending a bit too much time in the Hobart darkie, I began to remember something that Dougo had told me when I had asked him what the best drain in Australia was, his response was domain in Tasmania. I looked at my phone, 2:30 am, I looked at Rahu, “look there’s a drain close to here that’s meant to be really good, but if we do it, no photos. I want something to do tomorrow and we probably won’t come back if we take photos”.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
We marched onwards, through the canal and finally to the two arches, the water in bases of the arches was freezing, Hobart was freezing, I was freezing. We didn’t care. We had a drain to see.
Domain is fucking huge, for lack of a better term, it’s probably the biggest drain I’ve ever done. I didn’t know much about it other than it was big and it had an archway but it certainly has more to it than that, but I won’t spoil what’s down the side tunnels. As the water from the shipyard downstream began to lap lazily into the drain and the water began to rise as we approached the outflow, I noticed a few fish attempting to swim against the tide, we had gotten lucky and it was low tide.
As the lights from the shipyard filled the outflow I looked up, and saw probably the biggest ship I’ve ever seen parked in the causeway into the ocean. Suffice to say, the no photo rule was broken at that very second.
There are few moments that I can struggle to describe the feelings of, but standing in the outflow of domain with the giant plaque one way and the fuck off boat the other is one of those moments, how cold it was, the fish swimming in circles around us attempting to break free of the tide, the to-ing and fro-ing of everyone on the bow of the ship as the got ready to go to whatever faraway place they were going to.
I fucking love drains man.
