Funny how folks find tunnels fascinating. Maybe it’s some primitive refuge instinct although I suspect it’s a liking for the secrecy, mystery and mischief tunnels often exude.

Geelong boasts a neat urban mythology of souterrain architecture. Gun-runners, bootleggers, illegal immigrants, convicts, gold smuggling, a police shooting range … ripping tales stuff but a nice little catalogue of fairy tales really, apart from the cops.

Been into the Terminus Hotel basement, cellar of The Max/Golden Age/Deck, too. Nothing to see, sorry. Poked my nose down drains, railway tunnels. Nothing much there, either.

Mind you, I did scare the tripe out of some urbex kids in a cement works tunnel on McCurdy once when I was casting around on some vandalism report. That was real.

Odd story, back in 1880, where a woman died after being hit by a train. Poor thing wandered onto a disused vehicle crossing at Skene Street after taking off from the benevolent asylum.

Which didn’t make sense, of course, because the closest the railway is to Skene is beneath Little Ryrie in a tunnel where kids have scamped about testing their stupidity forever.

Story sparked a Facebook frenzy a while back, people trying to nut out how Skene Street crossed the line. Could only be front of Matthew Flinders, which might have constituted an extension of Skene across Latrobe. Except it didn’t.

Turns out Geelong’s had two Skene Streets. One in Newtown, the second … remember the pedestrian tunnel under the railway between Latrobe’s St Paul’s and Mercer’s Wood Oven? Turns out the second Skene was what’s now Roy Street, where that tunnel was.

Incidentally, believe it or not, the tunnel bottleneck under Matthew Flinders, delaying trains to Geelong’s southern growth corridor, is presently on the government’s Big Build agenda. Kind of.

The Big Build website says it will “explore” a “business case” for more services including “upgrades to the rail tunnel between Geelong and South Geelong”.

Yep, explore. That’s what you do down tunnels, of course. But 30 years earlier might have been handier for the most critical transport infrastructure Geelong’s needed in decades.

Interestingly, my transport snout suggests various options are in the wind. Some sound crazier than others: a new line beside the existing tunnel line, a double line under the existing line, moving Matthew Flinders to accommodate them, building a new line altogether straight down Latrobe …

All curious stuff. Big trick might be keeping the existing line going through whatever they come up with. How you do that sounds to me like a real tunnel mystery.

This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 13 November 2023