Speakers

S1: John De Boer, Operations Specialist

[Music]

S1: So the Maroondah Reservoir actually sits in the Maroondah catchment area.

It’s a 22 gigalitre or 22,000 megalitre storage, and it’s fed from a number of incoming streams. We have the Watts River, that comes in through the Maroondah Catchment – basically through the Black Spur Range. And also the Graceburn Aqueduct as well, which is fed through the Graceburn Creek.

S1: So the Maroondah system is located in the north-east of the city of Melbourne and it begins at the Maroondah Reservoir.

The original aqueduct transported water from Maroondah all the way to the city of Melbourne via the Preston Reservoir, but currently it transports water approximately 26 kilometres from the Maroondah Reservoir in Healesville to the Yering Gorge Pumping Station.

From there it is actually pumped into Sugarloaf Reservoir, where it is then treated and supplied into Melbourne’s broader water supply network.

S1: For the Coranderrk System, originally, back in the early 1900s consisted of a weir and diversion pipeline, that actually diverted water from the Coranderrk Creek back into the Maroondah Reservoir via the Graceburn System.

In the 1930s, when the Silvan Reservoir was constructed, a secondary weir was actually built upstream of the original weir. And then the water from that weir was diverted into an open aqueduct and a series of pipeline systems that connected into the existing O’Shannassy Aqueduct System, and then diverted water from the Coranderrk System into the Silvan Reservoir.

[On-screen text: Produced by Digital Heritage Australia in conjunction with Melbourne Water. Aerial footage provided by 3fb Aerworx.]