History of Sewerage
Construction of Spotswood Pumping Station (1893 - 1897). Photo courtesy of Museum Victoria.
Modern and efficient sewage treatment is something that most Melburnians take for granted, but this wasn’t the case for our ancestors.
Marvellous 'Smellbourne'
The discovery of gold in 1851 made Melbourne one of the richest cities on earth. With a population of about half a million people by the 1880s, it had also become Australia’s biggest city.
But Melbourne was facing a big pollution problem. While it had been described by British journalists as "a city of magnificent intentions", it was also being dubbed Marvellous 'Smellbourne’ because of the city’s unsanitary waste disposal methods.
Open sewers
In those early days the majority of waste from homes (including kitchen, bathroom and laundry wastes, along with the contents of chamber pots) were emptied into open drains that flowed into street channels and on to local rivers and creeks. Waste from farms and industries also flowed into these street channels, turning Melbourne's rivers and creeks into open sewers.