Historical information
Opened in 1891, the bridge formed part of the Maroondah Aqueduct carrying water from Watts River near Healesville to the reservoir at Preston where it joined Melbourne's metropolitan water system.
Covered under Heritage Overlay, Nillumbik Planning Scheme.
Published: Nillumbik Now and Then / Marguerite Marshall 2008; photographs Alan King with Marguerite Marshall.; p99
Built to supply thirsty Melbourne in the late 19th century, the siphon bridge spanning the Plenty River off Leischa Court, Greensborough, was part of an engineering masterpiece.
Opened in 1891, the bridge formed part of the Maroondah Aqueduct carrying water from the Watts River near Healesville to the reservoir at Preston where it joined the metropolitan distribution system.
A major link in Melbourne’s water supply, it also had a huge impact on communities, which mushroomed along its route.
Named after the Aboriginal word for the area around the Maroondah Reservoir, the Maroondah Aqueduct was fully operational until the 1970s.
Since the 1980s the land along parts of the aqueduct have been used for walking and bicycle riding, shaded in places by Monterey Pine trees planted to stabilise the surrounding ground.
From 1857 the Yan Yean Reservoir supplied Melbourne’s water but the growing city needed additional catchments.1 In 1886 work began on a weir on the Watts River to enable the aqueduct to carry most of the river water 41 miles (66km) to Melbourne.
The aqueduct, built by the Board of Works, is the oldest remaining aqueduct near Melbourne and was probably the first built with concrete.2
Although the aqueduct is now only used between the Maroondah and Sugarloaf Reservoirs, it can still be traced across the Shire. It extends from the Maroondah Reservoir through Christmas Hills, Kangaroo Ground, Research, Eltham, St Helena and then previously wound west through Greensborough to Reservoir.3
Built by horse and manpower the aqueduct gravity fed 25 million gallons (113.6ML) of water a day to Melbourne along a gradient of one foot to the mile. It included 25 miles (41km) of open concrete and brick channel, six miles (10km) of tunnels, and nine miles (15km) of 14 inverted siphons of riveted wrought-iron across creeks.
Bricks for the aqueduct were made from clay found near the sites and remains of several kilns can still be found between Kangaroo Ground and Christmas Hills.
Building the aqueduct transformed local
communities. An abattoir was established at Christmas Hills. Grog shanties and labourers’ camps sprang up and local courts dealt with cases of ‘petty pilfering and boisterous behaviour’.4 The Kangaroo Ground school population jumped to 91, crammed into a room with one teacher.
Miners who built the tunnels camped just north of Churinga in Greensborough – then called Tunnel Hill Camp – and adjacent to the Evelyn Arms Hotel. The miners’ high spirits were sometimes quenched in horse troughs or by a ‘welt under the ear and kick on the behind’ as the local constable calmed them down rather than lock them up.5
But the growing city of Melbourne needed more water, so the O’Shannassy catchment, east of Warburton, was added to the system in 1914. In 1920 work began on the present concrete Maroondah Dam one mile (1.6km) from the weir on the Watts River. The aqueduct capacity was thus doubled to 50 million gallons (227ML) a day.6
Intense land development threatened to pollute the open water supply, so channel sections were replaced with large pipes. In the late 1960s a large water main was built from the tunnel outlet at Research and extended through St Helena and Greensborough, so this section of the aqueduct was taken out of use. Long sections of the unused open channels in Greensborough and Bundoora were destroyed, but the old channel in Research and Eltham North remained largely intact.
In the 1970s, the Sugarloaf Reservoir was
constructed, inundating 445 hectares of land in Christmas Hills. Sugarloaf was officially opened in 1980 and serves as a water storage and treatment plant supplying Melbourne.
In the early 1980s pipes replaced the section from Sugarloaf Reservoir to the tunnel entrance at Kangaroo Ground. The Research-Kangaroo Ground tunnel operates as part of the pipeline system.
Significance
This collection of almost 130 photos about places and people within the Shire of Nillumbik, an urban and rural municipality in Melbourne's north, contributes to an understanding of the history of the Shire. Published in 2008 immediately prior to the Black Saturday bushfires of February 7, 2009, it documents sites that were impacted, and in some cases destroyed by the fires. It includes photographs taken especially for the publication, creating a unique time capsule representing the Shire in the early 21st century. It remains the most recent comprehenesive publication devoted to the Shire's history connecting local residents to the past.
Physical description
Born digital image file
