Sleeps Tunnel

How do you come to own a railway tunnel?

It's easy really.  In the beginning the Government owns the tunnel, because that's where the trains go.  The trains get bigger and heavier, and eventually they don't fit in the tunnel any more let alone over the rickety viaduct that goes to the tunnel.  The Government builds another tunnel and the first tunnel is neglected until someone leases it from the Government and grows mushrooms in it.  This works well for a while but eventually the mushroom operation outgrows the tunnel and moves on to purpose-built accommodation.  Someone else takes over the lease and uses the tunnel for wine storage and one day the Government doesn't want the tunnel any more and the wine-storage-lessee buys it and there you have it: someone owns a railway tunnel.

Two tunnels actually, but we only got to see one.

The Adelaide Fringe collaborated with the owner of the northern tunnel (known as Sleeps Hill tunnel after Mr Sleeps who gave the land to the government for tunnel building purposes back in 1879) to set up an audio-visual art installation in the tunnel.  Excitement was generated, tickets were sold, and off we trotted to Sleeps Hill for our taste of tunnel adventure.

Adventure started with waiting.  Audio-visual displays being what they are, we waited with an ever-growing crowd at the entrance to Sleeps Hill tunnel while technical difficulties were addressed and harried-looking volunteers walked busily in and out of the tunnel.  Waiting wasn't too bad, because the owner of the tunnel came along and gave us an impromptu talk about, among other things, how you come to own a railway tunnel.  He also told us about the headaches of owning railway tunnels which, by their very nature, attract all kinds of people who like to poke about in the tunnel and aren't above crashing and bashing their way through concrete, steel, and a multitude of locks to do so.  "They could call me," he said plaintively.  "And I'd show them through."  He told us about the teenager who, escorted by police, carried a pocketful of drugs for 360m in pitch black darkness until everything came to light at the end of the tunnel and the policeman expressed bitter disappointment that a teenager wasn't smart enough to drop his drugs in the dark and save a certain policeman from having to do more paperwork than what he already had.

 

Eventually the tech problem was (kinda) sorted and into the tunnel we went, keeping our hopes low after the devastating disappointment of Scone-Fest a few days ago.  

How do you get burn marks on the ceiling of a tunnel? First you remove the plastic air vent tubing installed by the mushroom farm. That leaves you with messy strings dangling down and if you own a tunnel which you're going to show off to everybody you don't want it messy. So you light a candle on a long stick and use it to burn the strings, and then you have a tunnel with no strings and black patches on the ceiling instead. So then you tell people that the black patches are left over from steam trains and they believe you, so you feel bad and tell them the truth.

We walked through light locks from one art zone to the next. It was easy walking, the floor was flat concrete with a slope to a gutter drain, courtesy of the long ago needs of the mushroom farm.  Mushrooms featured heavily in the art displays.

Huge, animated mushrooms grew overhead,

and we walked through a gallery of mushrooms the likes of which I'm very sure were never grown or harvested in Sleeps Hill tunnel.

Magic mushrooms?  They looked magic, anyway.

Beyond the mushrooms we entered a tunnel of lights and trippy patterns, way beyond what we had expected from a railway tunnel.

Red.

There's always a photo-bomber.  She even smiled for the camera.

Right at the end we went back to the conventional railway tunnel experience.

I feel like I'm at the start of a roller coaster.

We made our way out past photos of the tunnels and viaduct back in the days of steam.  Once no longer needed the tunnels were abandoned, but came back into service briefly during WWI for secret communication transport (to be honest I'm not sure how that worked, seeing the tunnels were not really that secret and anything going through the tunnels still had to use the main line) and during WWII for storage of state treasures from government House, the Museum, and the Art Gallery.  Secret war stuff got stored in there too, and tunnel 1 got a stockpile of ammunition and shells.

None of that now.  When not hosting art installations the tunnel is used to store wine (and to provide dark spaces for nefarious activities by people who break in to tunnels).

The viaduct.  All that remains now are the concrete footings.

Just so you know.

An hour and a half later we emerged blinking back into the real world and went home for lunch, planning new adventures as the tunnel owner was quite free with instructions of how to get to what was left of the viaduct. I guess if people can be encouraged to scramble around a viaduct they're not trying to break into a tunnel, are they? Come to think of it, if you're a teenager wanting to engage in acts of derring do (or find somewhere quiet and dark for chemical experiments) a tunnel through which Grandma  and half of Adelaide wandered looking at pictures of mushrooms isn't going to be very exciting, is it? Smart man, our tunnel owner.

We just had time for a quick bit of cat-coddling and a nap before we headed off to catch another Fringe event in town. But that's a story that will have to wait for later.