Mundaring Weir
A visit to Mundaring Weir and museum make for a pleasant half or full-day drive through the Darling Ranges via the semi-rural townships of Mundaring and Kalamunda. Facilities include toilets; picnic tables; dam wall walk.
The South Ledge picnic area is the location of the Golden View, a viewing platform from which walkers can enjoy views over Mundaring Weir and Lake O Connor.
Mundaring Weir was built across the Helena River in the the Darling Ranges near Perth at the end of the 19th century as part of a daring engineering scheme to catch water in the Darling Ranges and pump it to the Kalgoorlie goldfields 530 km away. The No. 1 pumping station, at the foot of the dam wall, houses the CY O Connor Museum, which tells the stories of the dam s construction and the engineer who made it a reality.
Location: 34km east of Perth in the Darling Ranges, via Mundaring or Kalamunda
Mundaring Weir was built around the turn of the 20th century as the catchment dam for a far-sighted Goldfields Water Supply Scheme. The scheme's pipeline carries water 530 km from Perth to Kalgoorlie. The water was initially pumped in successive stages with the aid of eight steam-driven pumping stations. The O'Connor Museum, which tells the story of the building of the dam and pipeline, occupies the original No.1 pumping station near the foot of the dam. Entry fees apply.
Location: Mundaring Wier, Mundaring Weir Road. Contact: (08) 9295 2455
In 1903, after more than five years of planning and construction, 22,700 cubic metres of water was pumped for the first time from Perth to Kalgoorlie through 557km of steel pipeline. At the time, the Coolgardie Water Supply Scheme represented one of the greatest hydraulic engineering feats the world had ever seen. It required the construction of a 21 million cubic metre storage weir at Mundaring in the Darling Range, and a series of eight steam-powered pumping stations, which forced water up to a vertical height of 393m. The pipeline was the brainchild of Charles Yelverton O'Connor, a remarkable engineer whose vision and initiative was largely responsible for the triumphs of the Western Australian gold mining industry. He was also noted for his involvement in a range of agricultural pursuits in the remote wheat belt districts of central Western Australia.
Born in the Irish town of Gravelmount in Castletown, Charles Yelverton O'Connor studied engineering at Dublin University before migrating to New Zealand shortly after gold had been discovered there. When O'Connor accepted an offer to become Western Australia's Engineer-in-Chief in 1891, he arrived at a small colony with massive engineering problems. His first task was to build an adequate harbour for the state's capital, Perth - the most geographically isolated city in the world. This he did with considerable success. But it wasn't until Bayley and Ford's gold discovery at Coolgardie in 1892 that the full spectrum of his engineering vision and prowess was called upon.
By 1893, gold rushes at Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie were in full swing, and thousands of prospectors from all corners of the globe were flocking to the fields to claim their fortune. Living conditions at the gold fields were appalling. Miners were forced to live in hessian huts, or in rudimentary structures that offered them only scant protection from the searing heat. On top of this, diseases like scurvy, dysentery and typhoid were a constant menace.
The biggest problem, however, was water, a rare commodity that was becoming increasingly more precious than gold. Water was transported 500km each day by rail, a system which was slow, expensive and unreliable. Hundreds of desperate prospectors had lost their lives drinking stagnant water from the Coolgardie Gorge during periods of drought. A new water initiative had to be developed.
In 1895, O'Connor was commissioned to produce a practical plan for pumping water directly into the Coolgardie goldfields. For two years, financial hold-ups delayed construction. During that time, O'Connor continued to develop his plan. Having discarded short-term alternatives such as deep boring and local surface storage, O'Connor embarked upon an audacious plan to pipe water into the goldfields from a coastal water supply. Not surprisingly, O'Connor's vision was widely ridiculed by a vicious press and unsympathetic political opponents who considered his ideas to be a flagrant waste of public funds.
Despite widespread public disapproval, work on O'Connor's pipeline began in 1898, and by 1902, the Mundaring Reservoir was near completion. From the beginning, however, O'Connor's project was hamstrung by delays and difficulties, mainly because most of the necessary engineering supplies had to be imported by sea from Europe and the USA. Ultimately, the strain of unyielding public criticism proved too much for O'Connor. He committed suicide at South Fremantle on 10th March, 1902, after leaving detailed instructions for the completion of his project in a final note. On16th January, 1903, less than five years after the start of its construction, O'Connor's pipeline was ready to supply water to the people of Kalgoorlie.
In the 90 years since his dramatic death, O'Connor's incredible vision has been vindicated. Not only has his pipeline fulfilled the water needs of a burgeoning mining community, it has been instrumental in enabling the development of remote wheat belt regions and continues to support rural populations today. The Scheme, O'Connor's greatest work, was internationally acclaimed in its day and remains one of the most ambitious successful engineering and infrastructure schemes of the late nineteenth century. The Water Corporation and its predecessor, the Public Works Department, have operated and maintained the pipeline over its 100 year history.
Since 1903, the pumping capacity of the goldfields scheme has been increased sixfold, and lateral pipelines now provide water to some 2.7 million hectares of agricultural land and country towns in schemes to the north and south of the pipeline. The Mundaring Weir was raised by 10 metres in the 1950s, which trebled its capacity.
Many components of the scheme remain and are subject to heritage classification. These include the pipe, 6 of the 8 pumping stations, tanks, and much other infrastructure.
