Switch from railway to water projects in South Australia in 1880s with demands and threats internal and external

Adelaide's first water supply from Thorndon Park reservoir enabled the opening of the city baths. This ornate Victorian frontage (inset), with Dutch gables, for the King William Road baths was opened in 1882. The interior image shows a large crowd at a swimming contest in 1896.
Main image by Ernest Gail, both courtesy State Library of South Australia

Water conservation became an issue in the 1884 South Australian election that brought in premier John Downer’s government. Downer switched the colony’s previous emphasis on railways to water projects.

Downer’s mind was concentrated on water by royal commissions in New South Wales and Victoria looking at irrigation possibilities along the River Murray. In 1887, a South Australian water conservation department employee, F.N. Burchell, had won a first order of merit at the jubilee exhibition for his plans for locks, canals and irrigation along the River Murray, between its mouth and the New South Wales border.

Downer also faced pressure from within the colony to meet water demands. This was especially so since 1870 when the government took over water suppy by removing the right of councils, such as the city and Port Adelaide, to own water infrastructure – offering them a free water supply in return.

Public expectations of a public water supply has increased since they has seen the benefits (despite inefficiencies) of water supply from Thorndon park reservoir to the city (allowing the opening of the city baths) in the 1860s. Although Yorke Peninsula towns, later hit by a typhoid epidemic, missed out, water supply to Port Adelaide and Port Augusta was legislated in 1863.

With rural influence in the South Australian parliament increasing, Downer had approved the first £80,000 instalment for the Beetaloo Springs reservoir to serve Crystal Book area and the Yorke Peninsula. Also in his half a million water spending was £200,000 for a Barossa scheme to dam South Para river when it joined Victoria and Malcom creeks.

Two covered reservoirs were built on the Adelaide city parklands in 1878. One was off South Terrace, close to Beaumont Road, and the other next to Victoria Park Racecourse. Water from the South Terrace reservoir was piped to Glenelg. (Redundant from the 1940s, it was dismantled in 1982 leaving a large mound.) In North Adelaide, a similar million-gallon reservoir was built off Barton Terrace with imported bricks from Melbourne.

Under hydraulics department engineer Oswald Brown from 1878, water supplies were provided for Magill, Gawler, Tea Tree Gully, Modbury and Glen Osmond, and well as extensions at Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Glenelg and Mount Gambier. Water also provided along country stock routes with 130 reservoirs, 62 wells and 22 well borings, and 125 station dams resumed and tanks constructed.

By 1912, despite the supplies from Thorndon Park being supplemented by Happy Valley and Hope Valley reservoirs, the city water supply was inadequate. As a result, the Millbrook Reservoir on the Torrens at Chain of Ponds was established.