Mud Crab’s underwater drive across Darwin Harbour breaks world record
Thousands of Territorians witnessed history as a ‘brains trust’ of divers and engineers successfully broke the world record for the longest and deepest underwater drive. See all the photos.
Northern Territory
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Tears, laughter and cheers could be heard across Mindil Beach as the Mud Crab drove onto the dry sands after a record-breaking underwater drive.
Oceantec managing director Mathew Mitchell joined the project about a year ago and said it was “epic” to see the team finally cross the finish line.
He said Mud Crab crew members made land just after 9pm Saturday and celebrated their newly-minted status as record-holders until 3am.
Mr Mitchell said “thousands” of Territorians were waiting on the beach for the team’s arrival.
“We stayed down at the beach for a while and celebrated on the beach and then we went back to the house in Bayview that we’d rented for all the crew and just kicked back and had a few beers and talked about all the things that went wrong,” he said.
He said he had anticipated the car would get bogged once or twice, but guessed the team got stuck about eight times in total.
“I think the car was a bit too heavy with all the batteries in it so we spent a lot of time getting out of bogs during the day.
“That was pretty much all that went wrong really, it’s the only thing that really slowed us down, was getting bogged.
“The car itself just kept going, it had no issues whatsoever.”
Mr Mitchell said the team had not yet decided what the car’s fate would be now that it had broken the world record.
About 30 divers steered a 1978 LandCruiser 7km from Mandorah to Mindil Beach – all from beneath the murky waves of Darwin Harbour – with the help of an engineering “brains trust”.
Onlooker Julie Pudney – who manages the I Love Darwin Facebook group – said she thought the team got bogged near a gas line in the first kilometre but was thrilled to watch the team overcome the obstacle from the livestream.
From then on, she knew the team would make it through “such an impossible thing to do”.
“There were some people saying (the drive) would be four hours, some people saying it would be nine hours, but I don’t think anyone realised it would be over 12 hours,” Ms Pudney said.
“When I saw those faces of the guys driving that car out, they were just on an absolute high.”
Ms Pudney said she hoped the car would go to a museum “even for a short time”.
“It shows that we can do world records, it shows that even though we’re a small community, we certainly do it different,” she said.
Engineer Luke Purdy was in the passenger seat when the bright orange car – decked out with mudcrab themed decor – descended into the depths.
“It’s a little bit surreal to be fair, it’s been a long road, we kind of put this whole project together in about six months, which is pretty fast I think for the scope of what we’ve had to do,” he said before the drive.
“To actually be here after so much work and effort from so many people in the team, it’s a really good feeling.”
The team left Mandorah at 9am and arrived on Mindil Beach exhausted and exhilarated about 12 hours later.
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