The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, also known as the Golden Pipeline, is a 120-year-old water supply infrastructure designed by C.Y. O’Connor. The Supply Scheme distributes water from Mundaring Weir to the Eastern Goldfields. 22 sites over the 566-kilometre pipeline have been included in the State Register of Heritage Places.
The Mundaring Weir marks the start of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme and is a large dam built in 1902 to store water, to be pumped along the pipeline. Mount Charlotte Reservoir marks the end point of the Supply Scheme and is located to the east of Kalgoorlie.
The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme opened in early 1903 and included a series of steam pumping stations, reservoirs and receiving tanks. Of the eight steam pump stations that were built in 1901-02, six of the originals remain. Steam powered engines were used to push water up and over the height of the Darling Range and onto the Goldfields.
The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme has exceptional importance in demonstrating a series of highly original technical achievements in the completion of one of the longest overland pipeline schemes, attempted in the nineteenth century.
It created employment opportunities and shaped local patterns of land use, farming, transport, and education. The Scheme was pivotal in the continued success of goldmining in the Eastern Goldfields, the development of small long-lasting rural communities along its breadth and allowed for permanent settlement inland.
The construction of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme was one of the greatest engineering and infrastructure schemes of the late nineteenth century and was recognised by the American Society of Civil Engineers as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. The successful completion of the scheme was pivotal in the growing confidence and economic importance of the state of Western Australia.
