WHAT
Goldfields Water Supply Scheme
WHERE
Mundaring to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
WHEN
Constructed from 1895 to 1903
The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme is more than one of Australia’s most impressive civil engineering feats – it tells the poignant story of a public works visionary and his personal tragedy.
Following 50 years of slow growth and economic struggle in the then-British colonial outpost of Western Australia, the discovery of rich gold deposits in the late 1800s pulled it back from the brink of collapse. From 1890 to 1900, the population sky-rocketed from 48,502 to 179,697, and with it a serious problem emerged – securing adequate water supplies for the hordes of gold diggers migrating to the desert to find their fortune.
Pipe dreams
In mid-1895, Irish-born Charles Yelverton O’Connor, the Engineer-in-Chief of the Western Australian Public Works Department, was commissioned to design a pipeline to pump water from the Darling Ranges east of Perth to the crowded Kalgoorlie goldfields.
A highly experienced and accomplished engineer, O’Connor’s design was bravely ambitious and, despite the support of the Premier Sir John Forrest, he received scathing criticism from the press and parliament for the scope and cost of the scheme.
The proposed pipeline would cart 23,000 kilolitres of water every day from Mundaring Weir (to be fed by the Helena River), via eight steam-driven pumping stations through 760mm steel pipes to the dusty goldfields, 566km away. The resulting structure would be the longest water main in the world at the time, and the first major pipeline to be constructed of steel.
As well as apprehensions about the cost of the project (2.5 million pounds, on loan from Britain – double the state’s annual budget), concerns were expressed that the gold rush and associated population boom might not last.
The press was biting in its criticism, and went as far as accusing O’Connor of corruption – a charge of which he was later cleared.
Enduring legacy
Tragically, on 10 March 1902, at the age of 59 and less than a year before the project’s completion, O’Connor shot himself while riding his horse into the surf on a beach at Fremantle.
The beach where O’Connor took his life was later named in his honour, with a statue of O’Connor and his horse in the water, and another memorial at Fremantle Port facing Fremantle Harbour; O’Connor’s other engineering triumph in Western Australia.
Today, more than a century later, the pipeline continues to provide water to the Kalgoorlie-Boulder region, as well as into WA’s northern and eastern wheatbelt.
In 1987, the Goldfield Water Supply Scheme was recognised as a National Engineering Landmark by Engineers Australia, and in 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers listed it as an international historic civil engineering landmark. Only two other Australian structures have received the same level
of recognition, the Snowy Hydro Scheme and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
In the picture: Pipe caulking machine being used on the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme pipeline (1902). Sourced from the collections of the State Library of Western Australia and reproduced with the permission of the Library Board of Western Australia.
This article originally appeared in the March-April edition of Public Works Professional.