The Hollow Beneath – Chapter 1 – The Silence After Opening

Part 1 – The Silence After Opening

The day the West Gate Tunnel opened, the city buzzed with the kind of optimism that only comes when a long-promised project finally materialises. For years, the billboards had promised relief: Less congestion. Faster travel. A better Melbourne. The Premier cut the ribbon under a sky so blue it looked painted, flanked by smiling engineers and suited executives. Cameras flashed, reporters jostled for soundbites, and the first convoy of cars rolled through the gleaming new entrance like pilgrims entering a promised land.

Mara Vance watched the coverage from her office at VicRoads, sipping lukewarm coffee. She’d been part of the traffic modelling team for the project years earlier, running simulations that predicted how the tunnel would redistribute the city’s flow. She knew the numbers by heart: a projected 28% reduction in surface road congestion in the west, a 15% improvement in freight efficiency, and—most importantly—thousands of trucks diverted away from residential streets.

The first few days went exactly as expected. Traffic patterns shifted, commuters experimented with new routes, and the usual teething problems—confused drivers, GPS errors, minor fender-benders—were reported. But by the end of the first week, something strange began to happen.

The streets of Melbourne’s inner west grew… quiet. Not just quieter than before, but unnervingly so.

Mara noticed it first on her own commute. She lived in Yarraville, a suburb that had long been plagued by the endless rumble of freight trucks heading to the port. Before the tunnel, she’d wake to the sound of diesel engines idling at the lights outside her apartment. Now, she woke to silence. The first morning, she smiled at the change. By the third, she found herself lying in bed, listening for the familiar growl of traffic—and feeling a faint, inexplicable unease when it didn’t come.

It wasn’t just her street. Footscray Road, once a churning artery of trucks and utes, now looked like a Sunday morning at dawn, even during peak hour. Cafés along the old freight routes saw their morning trade vanish. Delivery drivers reported finishing their runs in half the time.

The media hailed it as a triumph. “A New Era for Melbourne’s West”, read the Herald Sun. The Premier gave interviews about how the tunnel was “transforming lives” and “unlocking the city’s potential.”

But in the quiet corners of the city, people whispered.

Mara overheard two café owners talking one morning as she waited for her takeaway flat white.

“It’s too quiet,” one said, glancing out at the empty street. “Feels like the place is holding its breath.”

“Yeah,” the other replied. “And have you noticed? I haven’t seen old Mick in a week. He used to come in every morning for a bacon roll. Just… stopped showing up.”

Mara didn’t think much of it at first. People changed routines. Maybe Mick had moved, or was unwell. But over the next few days, she began to hear similar comments. A neighbour mentioned that the woman in the unit upstairs hadn’t been seen since the tunnel opened. A friend in logistics said one of their drivers had failed to return from a run, his truck later found abandoned near the tunnel entrance.

The official explanation was always mundane: people moved away, took different routes, changed jobs. But the coincidences began to stack up in Mara’s mind, forming a pattern she couldn’t quite name.

One evening, she stayed late at the office, poring over live traffic feeds. The tunnel’s internal sensors showed a steady flow of vehicles entering from both ends. But when she compared the entry numbers to the exit counts, there was a discrepancy. Small at first—just a handful of vehicles missing each day. But the gap was growing.

She double-checked the data, convinced it was a glitch. She ran the numbers again. The result was the same.

Vehicles were going into the tunnel and not coming out.

It was absurd, of course. There were no dead ends, no hidden exits. The tunnel was a straight shot under the river, monitored by dozens of cameras and sensors. Every metre of it was accounted for. And yet… the numbers didn’t lie.

To be continued.