Supplying water to rural Western Australia

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My article about building a dam with bullock teams brought some interesting comments from my friends here. Most parts of Western Australia experience water shortages from time to time. When a town was first established, it was usual for a ‘town dam’ to be constructed in an effort to collect water during the winter so that there would be water over the summer. An assured supply of water was also essential for the steam trains which were the main form of transport between towns in those times. Around the turn of the century, an Irish Australian, C Y O'Connor, conceived the idea of building a pipeline to carry water 330 miles from the Perth area to Kalgoorlie. The discovery of gold near Southern Cross, and at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, meant that a supply of water was desperately needed. Pumping stations were installed to move 5 million gallons of water daily from Mundaring Weir in Perth to the Mount Charlotte Reservoir in Kalgoorlie. The scheme was later extended to include a network of 44 towns and numerous farms. O’Connor was a true visionary, a man before his time. Despite his incredible engineering feats, there was a lot of criticism and resistance to the scheme at the time. He was libelled by the press and accused of corruption. In March 1902, he rode his horse into the sea and shot himself. Today the pipeline is regarded as one of the world's greatest engineering feats. It is the longest freshwater pipeline on earth. The photo shows the pipeline near Collie.