My daughter Mackenzie and I had the pleasure of both visiting the Mundaring Weir Hotel for the first time today to enjoy a yummy lunch. I have an accomplice with me from North Dakota USA named Waddles who tags along and I fill out a journal for the children of a primary school in ND to follow Waddles on his journey with me each day through our beautiful WA. If you are familiar with this practice and would like to entertain Waddles for a week , please let me know and you can pass on your views of home to children on the other side of the globe. Whilst I am well aware of the rich history of the area, my teenager would not have known so I had the pleasure of telling her some bits such as this. Mundarings main claim to fame is the Mundaring Weir which, through the remarkable engineering achievements of Charles Yelverton OConnor, supplies water to the towns in the wheatbelt and across to Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. Although first visited in 1829 as the river was traced to its source, the name Mundaring was not used until 1834 was settlers moved in. There was a land grab in the area from the 1840s but, while the land was claimed, few of the owners actually decided to move to their properties. In fact many of the large holdings were quite useless. By the 1880s there was a sprinkling of settlers in the area and a small settlement had been established on the Great Eastern Highway. The first freehold land in the area wasnt granted until 1882 and it wasnt until 1889 that a sawmill opened in the area and timber cutters moved in to exploit the extensive stands of jarrah and karri. The turning point in the history of the area came in 1896 when the Western Australian government committed itself to the construction of the Mundaring Weir and the pipeline which would connect the waters of the Helena River to the thirsty mining towns of Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. In 1898 a railway line was completed connecting the main Eastern Railway line to the Mundaring Weir site. The township grew rapidly to meet the sudden increase in population. Local entrepreneurs were quickly on the spot to provide services for the workers on the dam. In his book The Helena Story Edward Quicke describes the establishment of the dam community: By June 1898 there were 295 men working at the weir...The area became a vast camp with men living in tents and families in hessian and barrel staves shanties. Conditions were fairly primitive and a letter from the local schoolmaster to the Education Department complained that people from the camp were using the school toilets on weekends and holidays...A police station was established about half-way between the school and the traffic bridge over the river. It consisted of the inevitable hessian and barrel staves and as there was no structure capable of holding prisoners, the latter were chained to a log! There was a store and a post office and one of the shanties dispensed home made hop beer. The latter was so popular that many of the workmen had difficulty negotiating the hill to their tents...As a result of their efforts the road up the hill between the dwellings was called Struggle Street. The dam was completed in 1900 and the laying of the pipes began in 1902. The construction of the both the dam and the pipeline are two of the engineering wonders of Western Australia. They are great achievements in an age when earth moving equipment and tractors were not available. The genius behind the whole project was Charles Yelverton OConnor OConnor was born in Ireland in 1843. He emigrated to New Zealand in 1865 and moved to Western Australia, where he was employed as the Engineer-in-Chief, in 1891. His major projects were to be the states railways, the establishment of Fremantle harbour, and the construction of the water pipeline from Mundaring to Coolgardie. OConnor initiated the plan to build the pipeline in 1895 but it was violently opposed in Parliament and the approval to start work wasnt granted until 1898. Even when the project was underway its critics, believing it to be impractical, did not relent. OConnor was subjected to a particularly vicious press campaign. He committed suicide (partly as a result of the pressures - his suicide note included detailed instructions on the construction of the pipeline) in March 1902. The pipeline was completed the following year and the result was that vast areas of the wheatbelt and the goldfields, which had been relying on unreliable wells and waterholes, suddenly found that they had regular supplies of water. The scheme changed the face of the central Western Australia forever. From a situation where water was being transported 500 km by train to a daily output of 5 million gallons being delivered along 557 km of pipes was little short of a miracle. Soon after the water scheme was opened it became a popular weekend activity to travel out from Perth to inspect Mundaring Weir. In wintertime, when the spillway (at the time the weir was the highest overflow dam in the world) was running people would come to the dam just to see the man-made waterfall. The local hotel, the Goldfields Weir Hotel, did a roaring trade and by 1909 the branch line trains had been time tabled to connect with trains arriving from Perth. Today the Weir is still a pleasant picnic spot and No 1 Pumping Station has been converted into the C Y OConnor Museum honouring the man whose ingenuity and genius converted the scheme into a reality. The museum exists because in 1954 the pumping of the water was changed from steam to electricity. In her excellent book, The Swan Valley: A Perspective in Time and Place, Dorothy B. Robinson notes that the Mundaring Dams unusual straight walls are a direct result of a response to the geology of the whole region. An interesting feature about the wall of the Mundaring Weir is that it has been built straight across the valley rather than in the convex curve considered desirable for dam walls. With a convex curve, the pressure of the water actually strengthens the wall by compression. At the same time, however, it diverts water to the sides, putting pressure there. The granitic rocks of the Helena River walls have, in ages past, been split by earthquakes and faults, and it was thought that they would not be able to withstand the pressure of the water, so the wall was built straight across the valley. Another interesting feature of the Mundaring Weir area is the pine plantation that surrounds the dam. Shortly after construction of the dam, the surrounding forest was cleared to allow for greater runoff, more water to flow into the dam. Unfortunately, this led to erosion and to soil flow into the dam, and, as well, due to the rising water table which followed the clearing of the trees, the water became saltier. Solution? Replant the forest. Mundaring Weir has since been raised in height but many doubt we will ever see it overflow again. Maybe 2029 would be a perfect time?
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 09:03:41 +0000
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