Date: 20th of December 2025
Rating: ★★★★★
Dweller's tomb is one of best drains in melbourne. It got its name from an old drain exploring group Drain Dwellers, who were exploring the drains back in the 70s.
Entrance: 3m
Materials: Concrete, Redbrick
Shapes: Round, Box, Arch
Dwellers has two outflows, the old 3m outflow by the creek, and the new low outflow by the golf course. The old outflow is about knee deep for the first 50m or so before shallowing out.
Still in the wet at the start, there are these two little sidepipes with sewer overflow flaps down them.
Not long after the water clears up the drain has this small diversion and a raised section of square drain.
There is a lot of well preserved graff as this section doesnt get a lot of water coming through it.
There is a small sidepipe further on that leads all the way to the shopping center car park. I have heard that there is a grille at the end but it was too stoopy for me to want to find.
From here the drain comes to a junction with two pipes leading upstream, and two leading downstream. The newer 1.8m RCP leading upstream is a dry diversion of the old tunnel leading to the beach room. The new downstream tunnel leads towards the new dry outflow.
The 1.8m pipe becomes a low double barrel RCP that leads to a corner junction room, then the drain continues as double barrel RCP until reaching a long wide grille with four concrete box outflows to the golf course.
Back to the main drain, the upstream pipe new 1.8m RCP is just a dry pipe that leads straight to the beach room, its an easy diversion if you dont feel like rolling the dice on the dam.
Before the dam there are some stairs that are very pretty.
There is a dam that can sometimes clog up, and when it does water pools up to about thigh deep and it can be quite the inconvenience.
The beach room is one of my favourite features of this drain. Apart from the floor being wet, it is a wonderful large open space to be in, good for parties and whatnot. Much like the other new pipes and diversions, this also came along with a bunch of work on the drain during 2020-2022. The small RCP going downstream out of the beach room is the diversion that links to the next junction downstream.
Upstream from the room there is a junction with the left pipe leading immediately to a grille, and the left pipe leading to another junction room further up into the south half of Dwellers.
Both of the concrete boxes on either side of the main drain in the beach room lead here.
There is a very large junction further up, the left is the northern branch of dwellers, and right the southern branch.
The southern branch has a few cool things to see but gets low quick.
The northern branch starts off as a redbrick arch, the remains of the bridge for the road that ran above.
These redbrick arch sections are most likely the oldest sections in the whole drain. They are also the only two sections of any other material than concrete.
Both used to be bridges, the first a bridge for a road and the second a railway. Both are pretty short at about 20m long.
Further up is a 900mm pipe that connects the north and south half of the drain. Inbetween are two bunker style gutterboxes. They don't have lids and can't be opened but they are fine to sit in.
It is pretty strange you see two different drainage catchments connect like this.
There is an old canal that shows that this drain would have been a bluestone lined canal before they put it underground. It gets low for a little bit before coming to a square concrete section where it resumes at standing height.
Up on the left is an offshoot that quickly shrinks to a small RCP. It would be stoopy but I don't think there would be much down there as it doesn't get bigger than 1.3m. From here there are not many features, but there is lots of concrete pipe. It is pretty long before the paper room.
There is a small section of drain that is round bottomed and flat ontop. I haven't seen this in many other drains.
The grille exit here may be a little hard to get into. The sidepipe is 650mm and a little ways off the ground, and usually a bit slippery. It leads to a gutterbox on someones driveway with a pretty light grille that can be removed easily.
Past here is the end of the line, the paper room. Named after the old newspaper used as filling for the ceiling of the junction room.
The big RCP coming from the big junction leads into the southern half of dwellers. Not long walking down here you come to a junction room where the righthand dry pipe from the beach room meets back into the main drain. Going left will take you directly to a grille.
At some point the drain will squish to a considerable stoop. We went way too far down here to find nothing apart from a nice manhole to exit. Walking along the path of where the drain continues we popped a few manholes and saw it eventually turns into a small 1.4m RCP right near where the drain ends on the map.
There might be something cool down here but I can not be bothered with this much of a stoop for so long, maybe ill bring a bike down here.
