Melbourne’s Yan Yean Reservoir was commenced just 18 years after John Batman embarked on his exploratory voyage to Port Phillip in mid 1835, and, upon siting the Yarra River, the infamous notation in his diary that stated ” . . . This will be the place for a village . . . ” The location must have been breathtakingly beautiful:
” . . . To the new arrivals the sight must have been strange and beautiful. The slopes to the river bank where they had camped were “like an English Field in May.” Sweet tall grass and light timber spread up to the line of Collins Street. Beyond, the forest thickened. A little creek bubbled down the gully which would one day be Elizabeth street, and over and about it golden wattle drooped, parrots shrieked, and cockatoos flew. Wild flowers carpeted the future Flinders street. Eastward the girth-high grass gave place gradually, on the future Collins street hill, to a huge gumtree forest, and past the line of Gisborne street, to primeval bush haunted by opossum and kangaroo. Along the river spread reedy marshes, the homes of countless teal, swans, ducks, geese and quail. Beyond Batman’s Hill lay the spectacular Blue Lake, covered with water fowl; later, alas, to become the morass called Batman’s or the West Melbourne Swamp. Tall trees and thick scrub lined the river bank . . . “
Source: Excerpt – ‘Argus’ (Melbourne, Vic) – Article “Melbourne’s First 100 Years . . . ” – published 16th October 1934
The Yarra River once swung in an elegant loop, that was surrounded by pristine swamps full of bird life. John Batman described this stunning landscape in his journal of exploration dated in the year 1835:
” . . . We then made the Rim, I had gone up a few days [?] intending to come on the opposite side of the River and hail the vessel – I [?] on the Banks of the River a large Marsh about 1½ mile by 3 or 4 long and the Richest description of soil not a tree. When we got on the Marsh, the Quails began to fly and I think at one time. I can safely say I saw 1,000 Quails flying at one time, quite a Cloud, I never saw anything like it before. I shot two very large ones as I was walking along at the upper end of the Marsh is a large lagoon. I should think from the distance I saw that it was upwards of a mile across and full of swans, ducks, geese. etc. after exploring this Marsh, we [?] through a Tea Tree scrub very high and thick, we expected on getting through this to make the vessel in an hour or two – but to our great surprise when we got through the scrub we found ourselves on a much larger River than the last – we went up and just come down . . . “
Source: Excerpt – Transcript – John Batman’s Hand Written Journal – Sunday 7th June 1835
This marsh was to become known as ‘Batman’s Swamp’. In 1841, Georgiana McCrae’s son, George, described it as ” . . . a real lake, intensely blue, nearly oval, and full of the clearest salt water . . . “
During the early years of settlement, however, the Yarra River became the major water highway. Ships travelled upstream as far as what is now known as the ‘Queens Bridge’, on Williams Street, which joins Queens Bridge Street just south of the Yarra today. There, a rock barrier known as ‘The Falls‘, once naturally separated the salt water of Port Phillip Bay from the fresh water of the Yarra River.
The beautiful cascading ‘Falls’ would often bank up with fresh water, thereby regularly flooding the area now known as ‘South Melbourne’. Where once Melburnians were able to drink, bath, irrigate and fish directly in the pristine waters of the Yarra River, the influx of people and industry destroyed the water quality thereby evicting the birds, flora and animals that had lived there for countless of eons . . .
‘Development’ resulted the extreme contamination of the lower Yarra River. Sewage and industrial waste rendered the river water undrinkable within only a few years of settlement:
” . . . A trip to Geelong by steamer was the first stage of my excursion to the “diggings,” as our destination was the neighbourhood of Ballaarat. We went on board in the afternoon from the wharf in Melbourne, with the prospective advantage of going down the Yarra, instead of embarking at Sandridge, and congratulated ourselves on thus “seeing the banks of the river” . . . “
” . . . I should think the nearest approach to the reality would be a sail down a sewer; or, perhaps, if the dirtiest portion of the dirty old Thames were turned aside into a very dirty ditch, redolent of every conceivable abomination, and barely wide enough for two vessels to pass each other safely, and the level so arranged that the whole should fester and almost stagnate under a semitropical atmosphere for nine months out of twelve, some approximation might be obtained to the condition of the Yarra below Melbourne. To exaggerate the picture is simply impossible. The banks of black or grey, shining, greasy mud were higher than the swamp beyond, thus ensuring an unfailing supply of miasmatic vapours, and sustaining the life of a low scrub of unwholesome-looking “tea-trees,” stunted and hideous, that stood in the inky slime, and furnished rods to a few squalid, filthy children (not very unlike the “offspring” presented by Father Thames to the fair city of London, in ‘Punch,’ July 3, 1858), who, barefoot, or only booted with mud, and with scarce rags enough hanging about their attenuated limbs for the exigencies of decency, stood on the dividing ridge between swamp and sewer, fishing. Yes—fishing—in water whose indescribable foulness and putrescence made one sick to pass above it! Whether they caught any living fish—for the honour of the fishy character I trust not—or eat them afterwards, I had no means of knowing; but dead, bloated carcases of dogs, cats, pigs, and the Yarra only knows what else! were floating abundantly in the “gruel, thick and slab,” fit enough for Hecate’s cauldron, through which we were propelled slowly, as if to give every facility for fever and all other evil genii of the place to come quickly on board. Large “boiling-down” establishments were placed near the banks, adding their liberal quota of animal refuse to the witch-broth as it sluggishly crept by; and—saddest and worst of all—in yards erected in the swamp, and from one to three feet deep in miry slush, were crowds of beautiful cattle, shut up in filth, stench, and starvation, awaiting (as they often do for several days) the mercy of death . . . “
Source: Excerpt – ‘Over The Straits: A Visit To Victoria’ – by Louisa Anne Meredith – published 1861
Some thirty years later, during the 1890’s, a Scottish visitor described the Yarra River as “ . . . the filthiest piece of water I have ever had the misfortune to be afloat on . . . “
Perhaps it is fortunate that John Batman was not alive to witness the desecration of the beautiful and idyllic village site along the river that he had founded . . .
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Hence the Urgent Need for a Clean Water Source for the rapidly expanding City . . .
” . . . For fifteen years after the first settlers arrived (1835), those who had not the means or facilities for private conservation were obliged to depend on water obtained from the Yarra, above a natural reef of rocks situated where the Queen’s-bridge now stands. The water was pumped by hand into carts, and delivered from door to door. As the reef was not high enough to prevent an overflow from Hobson’s Bay at high tide, which made the river water brackish for a few hours, it had to be artificially raised. A writer of the period states that crowds of carts attended daily at the pumps near the foot of the old bridge “to draw up the thin mud from the river bank, flavoured, it might be, by the contiguity of dead animals, town refuse, and horse washing. With the fluid so procured, ans so dispensed at the rate of 2/ a load, all the beer, tea, &c., was compounded, and with it all domestic operations were performed for many a long year.”
” . . . There were agitations for a permanent water supply. Various schemes were proposed to the council, which commissioned its first town surveyor (Mr. James Blackburn) to investigate the matter. Mr. Blackburn explored the Plenty Ranges, and actually located the site of the present Yan Yean reservoir. He was not a hydraulic engineer, but merely a surveyor; yet he struck some good ideas. On August 9, 1851, he reported that an abundant and perpetual water supply could be obtained from the creeks and springs, flowing from Mount Disappointment, which, united, formed the Plenty River. Plans were submitted for closing the outlet from the valley and swamp of the Yan Yean with an embankment, and forming a reservoir, which would give a supply of 40 gallons per head per day for a population of 70,000 people.
There were rival schemes . . . “
” . . . The commission adopted Mr. Blackburn’s site for the Yan Yean reservoir, but enlarged the scheme, so that provision would be made for the wants, not of 70,000, but 200,000 people. Mr. Blackburn was fortunate in his selection of a site, inasmuch as by building a dam little more than half a mile long and 30 ft high, what was in its day the largest reservoir in the world could be constructed . . . “
Source: Excerpts – ‘Argus’ (Melbourne, Vic) – Article “Melbourne Water Supply . . . ” – published 1st February 1908
Works to dam the Plenty River commenced in 1853:
” . . . On December 20, 1853, the first sod of the Yan Yean waterworks was turned by Mr. La Trobe . . . ”
Source: Excerpt – ‘Argus’ (Melbourne, Vic) – Article “Melbourne Water Supply . . . ” – published 1st February 1908
The scope of works included a dam wall 986 km long, 9 m high x 6 m wide – spanning the western extremity of a natural valley then known as ‘Ryder’s Swamp’, and, pipes of reducing size, which ran the 32 km – carrying water from Yan Yean reservoir to Melbourne:
– 30 in (76 cm) from Yan Yean Reservoir to Morang
– 27 in (69 cm) from Morang to Preston
– 24 in (61 cm) from Preston to Melbourne
Four years on, in the December of 1857, the much celebrated occasion honoured the engineering feat that saw the first water flow into the city of Melbourne, all the way from the newly constructed ‘Yan Yean Reservoir’:
” . . . No city in the Southern Hemisphere, and very few of the Northern, can boast of as fine a supply of water as that provided by the Victorian Government for the use of the citizens of Melbourne. Viewed from a sanitary point of view alone, it has been of incalculable value, and to its copious use may be attributed the absence of miasmatic and other diseases indigenous to all low lying tropical cities, and which, in the absence of efficient sewerage, would be certain to prevail in the capital of Victoria and its suburbs ; a great saving has also been effected in insurance by the diminished risk of fire.
Melbourne was for many years supplied from the River Yarra, until the drainage from the contiguous suburbs, and the refuse from various manufactories along its banks threatened to render the water too impure for human consumption, and it was decided to provide a supply of purer water from some place of sufficient altitude to be self-supplying, and thus do away with expensive machinery similar to that now used at the water works at Cook’s River.
After considerable investigation the commissioners, in whom the works were vested, decided that the best supply could be obtained from the Plenty Ranges, and at a point about twenty miles from Melbourne they found a magnificent sit for a reservoir formed by nature, and only requiring an embankment to be thrown across a gully to render it available for the supply of the largest city in the world. The works were commenced in 1853, and proceeded without intermission for four years, and in December, 1857, the whole was completed at a cost of about £1,017,087 11s. 4d. ; and the city received its first regular supply of water, which has never since ceased, unless perhaps for a few hours to effect some repairs to the pipes.
The area of the reservoir is 1,300 acres, the greatest depth of water 27 feet, and the basin usually contains 6,500 million of gallons. From the reservoir shown in our engraving, the water is conducted through immense iron pipes for a distance of about 13 miles to Preston, where a smaller reservoir, with suitable filtering beds received the supply, and regulates the pressure upon the pipes by which it is thence conducted to the city . . . “
Source: Excerpt – ‘Illustrated Sydney News (NSW) – Article “The Yan Yean Reservoir” – published 15th April 1865
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Managing the Equilibrium between Supply and Demand . . .
” . . . The first main water main into Melbourne had a delivering capacity of 8,000,000 gallons per day, and it terminated a Gertrude-street. The draw did not equal 8,000,000 gallons. While during many periods of the day people were clamouring for water, which they were unable to get in the required quantity, there was a surplus at night. The difficulty was lessened in 1864 by the construction of the Preston reservoir, enabling a reserve to be established at night to meet the heavy draw during the daylight hours . . . “
Source: Excerpt – ‘Argus’ (Melbourne, Vic) – Article “Melbourne Water Supply . . . ” – published 1st February 1908
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The Yan Yean Reservoir Today . . .
The Yan Yean Reservoir remains much the same to this very day, and, still supplies water to Melbourne. Incredulously, this, which was at the time deemed the largest reservoir in the world, has stood the test of time – survived floods and bushfires – and remains a testament to the ingenuity, problem solving and hard working nature of our first pioneers !!!
Aqueducts, expansion of the feeds into the reservoir, extra piping and infrastructure have been added to cope with the rapidly expanding city that Melbourne had become. The 20th century saw an expansion in the number of reservoirs that feed Melbourne, however, the Yan Yean Reservoir has never been replaced:
1880’s Water harnessed just north of the Great Dividing Range flowed via: the Silver Creek Aqueduct → the Wallaby Creek Aqueduct → The Cascades → Jack’s Creek → into the Toorourrong Reservoir → from there the Clear Water Channel carried the water to the Yan Yean Reservoir
1891 Watts River (near Healesville) was tapped, supplying water to Melbourne, via the Maroondah Aqueduct
1927 Maroondah Reservoir
1928 O’Shannassy Reservoir
1932 Silvan Reservoir
1957 Upper Yarra Reservoir
1973 Cardinia Reservoir
1971 Greenvale Reservoir
1981 Sugarloaf Reservoir
1984 Thomson Reservoir
Considering Australia is one of the driest continents in the world and that so much effort and expense has gone into providing pure, clean, high quality water to Melbourne, it is difficult to understand, let alone comprehend, that mega millions of litres of this wonderful water gets flushed straight down the millions of toilets that occupy the city . . .
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