Inside the Fortress: paying a high price for thrills

Thrillseekers ... this photo of The Fortress, by a user called siologen, appears on the international urban exploration website www.uer.ca. Sunday's survivor escaped through bent bars.


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URBAN explorers know The Fortress as the best stormwater drain in Sydney: more than two kilometres long and up to 10 storeys high, with slides, balconies, and waves from the Pacific Ocean battering bars across the outlet at Lurline Bay.

On Sunday evening, a 21-year-old woman known as Holly and two of her friends - all artists and well-known members of the graffiti-writing subculture - climbed into the drain through a hatch in Moverly Road, Maroubra. They painted, drank and then are believed to have climbed down from a dry platform below the manhole into a network of tunnels, staircases and pits, leaving behind a long-necked beer bottle and carton of vanilla milk. The trio may have been regulars at The Fortress. Urban exploration websites rate it as a "must see" and consider it safe, with no discussion of what might happen when, as on Sunday, storm clouds gather.

"They wouldn't have done it just to say 'we might die'," a friend of Holly's, who wanted to be known only as Blake, told the Herald yesterday. "It was an unlucky thing.

"It's a raw art form: you don't have the lighting, you can get electrocuted, you can get zapped on the train tracks. Anything can go wrong with graffiti art."

In minutes - perhaps seconds - it did go horribly wrong on Sunday. Some time before 5.30pm the storm hit and a rush of water swept the three explorers off their feet, carrying them through the tunnels for at least a kilometre towards the ocean. By the time they struck the outlet, Holly and a 25-year-old man were dead. Incredibly, their friend, a 27-year-old graffiti artist from Pennant Hills, survived. He was conscious when he hit the grate, and squeezed himself amid thrashing waves through bent bars little wider than a man's shoulder. A local boy, Luke Simmons, 17, was watching the ocean from his South Coogee back window when he spotted the man in the water, waving for help. He and his father rushed down with surfboards and pulled the man to shore.

"When I got out there, I realised that this guy was completely drunk," he told the ABC. "He was acting really, really drunk and I could smell it on his breath. I had to physically grab his arm and strap the board to him to make sure that he didn't fall off."

When the man climbed out of the water he "just panicked", his father, Steve Simmons, told the Nine Network. "He ran straight round to the drain on the other side and he realised his two friends were dead."

He threatened to throw himself back into the water. "He was distraught on the rock ledge next to the situation where they were and we just had to drag him up back away from it. Otherwise he would have been back in the drink."

Police spoke to the survivor and have not ruled out charging him with tresspass or defacing public property. He was treated in hospital, then discharged.

Lifeguards Peter Halcro and Paul Moffatt were also called to Lurline Bay. They found the drain and braved the clash of waves and stormwater to slip through the bars and recover the bodies of the survivor's friends.

"When we were actually inside … the whole drain was going dark, with the surf pounding up through the drain," Mr Halcro said. "Everything went dark for a few seconds for us while the bodies were just floating around. There was also stormwater coming out the other way, so we were dealing with dirty water and large surf."

They thought at first that there may have been three people dead. Clothes had been ripped off by the ferocity of the water. But there was just a man's body floating with the waves and a woman's tangled around the bars.

"Water was coming in and out," said Mr Moffat. "It was dark in there and a bit eerie." They recovered the man first, and his body was winched from near the entrance to the drain. But that was too dangerous for the rescue helicopter to attempt a second time, so the lifeguards swam the woman's body 50 metres into the bay.

"We have been doing this job for a while and that was one of the trickiest recoveries we have had to do," said Mr Halcrow. But he was modest about his role: "That's why we're here."

Well-wishers visited Lurline Bay yesterday. Holly and her boyfriend, Morgan - who was not with them on Sunday - were well-known graffiti artists, her friends visiting the site told The Herald.

"She was the best female spirit in the graffiti world," said Blake. "They [Morgan, her boyfriend, and Holly] were living together for ages, and they had parties all the time. I met heaps of friends through her."

Morgan's father also visited the bay with his wife, who said Holly was studying graphic design at TAFE. "[Holly] was beautiful, she had a beautiful personality," she said. "We were with her just last weekend."

Blake said the illicit nature of graffiti forced artists to go underground and guard their anonymity.

"A lot of people think that graffiti is for other people to look at. A lot of the time it's just for yourself. It's another artform. You're trying to find a big space to do it because that's the best way to express yourself.

"They were just doing something you do every weekend. You try and find somewhere to paint."

Another friend, Gavin, said: "They've obviously found themselves tucked away in a place that wasn't the best."

One urban explorer describes visiting The Fortress at midnight. "It was a great night with a full moon and a high tide," he told a website. "At the slide at the end that leads into the ocean the waves crashing in were already shin deep.

"We knew we were going to get wet. Absolutely soaked, I should say. It was past waist deep half way to the bars and even higher once we go there. These waves came in over the top of the drain, totally filling it up with water.

"Holding onto the bars while the sea came crashing into us trying to force us back and looking out into the ocean all lit up by the moon and also seeing the houses and street lights over the side of the bay.

"It was the best thing to see and experience."

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