Lessons from Western Australia's goldfields water supply scheme

Abstract

In July 1896, the parliament of the sparsely populated colony of Western Australia voted to raise a loan of £2·5 million in London to construct a reliable water supply for its booming Coolgardie goldfield, a sum greater than the total cost of the colony's capital works in any previous year. The scheme, prepared by the colony's engineer-in-chief, Charles O'Connor, involved pumping water 565 km along the world's first steel pipeline, which required 77 000 t of steel plate. This paper argues that the scheme was not one of monumental extravagance as its opponents claimed, but was one that was designed using the latest hydraulic research and ultimately was the only one that could have provided the reliability required to sustain the goldfield past its early years. Logistical problems, both in materials supply and in the construction of the pipeline largely through uninhabited country, were huge by contemporary standards. Two important technical innovations, the locking bar pipe and the mechanical pipe caulking machine, helped keep the cost of the project close to budget. The lessons learnt from the long, but eventually successful, battle against corrosion and leakage benefited hydraulic engineers around the world.