Large swathes of the US were blanketed in snow and ice over the weekend, and what better way to spend a snow day than going down a YouTube rabbit hole? Everyone has their favorite oddity: ASMR, jazzy pop song covers, cooking channels, or what have you. But DIY enthusiasts in particular are missing out if they’re not watching Drain Cleaning Australia, featuring an Australian plumber known only as Bruce as he goes about his daily business of shooting high-powered water jets into stubborn clogged drainage systems. It’s “the YouTube channel you never knew you needed.” And it’s done so well that he’s now launched a second channel, Bruce the Plumber.
I stumbled upon the Drain Cleaning Australia channel via Amy Poehler‘s Good Hang podcast episode with Kate McKinnon, who is a big fan and does a dead-on delivery of Bruce’s trademark lines (“You little rippah!”). Bruce never appears in his videos, apart from his hands and the occasional shadow as he films various challenging jobs with his intrepid smartphone. He seems to have struck a good balance between online popularity and protecting his personal privacy. (Bruce did not respond to our interview request. It’s okay, mate, we know all those drains Down Under aren’t going to unclog themselves.)
Armed with his trusty collection of jet nozzles and “Mister Plungey,” Bruce has removed all manner of nasty things from drains over the years: masses of human hair from shower drains; tree roots; plastic bags and other refuse that somehow found their way into drainage systems; and the less said about the many clogged toilets, the better.
My personal favorites are when Bruce takes on clogged restaurant grease traps, including the one at the top of this article in which he pulls out a massive greaseberg “the size of a chihuahua.” When it’s Bruce versus a nasty grease trap, the man remains undefeated (well, almost—sometimes he needs to get a grease trap pumped out before he can fix the problem). And I have learned more than I probably ever needed to know about how grease traps work.
Each video is its own little adventure. Bruce arrives on a job, checks out the problem (“she is chock-a-block, mate!”), and starts methodically working that problem until he solves it, which inevitably involves firing up “the bloody jet” to blast through blockages with 5,000 psi of water pressure (“Go, you good thing!”). This being Australia, he’ll occasionally encounter not just cockroaches but poisonous spiders and snakes. And he’s caught so many facefulls of wastewater and sewage while jetting that he really ought to invest in a hazmat suit. Even the cheesy canned techno-music playing during lulls in the action is low-budget perfection.
Bruce isn’t the only plumber with a YouTube channel—it’s a surprisingly good-size subgenre—but he’s the most colorful and entertaining. His unbridled enthusiasm for what many would consider the dirtiest of jobs is positively infectious. He regularly effuses about having the best job in the world, insisting that unclogging gross drains is “living the dream,” and regularly asks his audience, “How good is this? I mean, where else would you rather be?” Sure, he says it with an ironic (unseen) wink at the camera, but deep down, you know he truly loves the work.
And you know what? Bruce is right. It might not be your definition of “what dreams are made of,” but there really is something profoundly satisfying about a free-flowing drain—and a job well done.
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