Urban exploration: The tunnel rats

Welcome to the city after dark.

Two mates from Sydney, 24/7 and GK, are self-styled 'tunnel rats'.

They are part of a subculture known as 'Urbex', or urban exploration, which often involves trespass and the possibility of arrest.

But their purpose is to document the world from a different perspective and reveal its beauty.

Take a look at their world in their own words and pictures.

It goes by many names — urbex, urban exploration ... it's sort of each to their own, some people like exploring just the mountains, the high tops and that, or you've got urban exploration for the buildings and the underground.

It's a Thursday night and all my mates are off their tits on coke and shit... [we just want to] do something creative.

Yeah, we just want to run down a tunnel.

We're not destroying anything, we're just appreciating the beauty of the underground. We're just taking photos. That's all we're doing.

We appreciate seeing these places because we know not many people see them ... so we give them that hand and we show them the big places and they say, "wow, that's amazing".

When we started we didn't even have cameras — then some kid was like, "Yo, you should take your camera along one night" and like, alright, sweet.

We're like superheroes showing people these places they've never heard of and that's what keeps dragging us back.

I've been to court for trespassing and break and enter, but that got reduced down because I actually told the judge I do photos and sell them as art. And he was understanding but he said, "next time you're here, it'll be a different story".

Topics: human-interest, photography, sydney-2000, australia, nsw