Chichester Dam
Well, it’s Wednesday so time again for a little about the history of Newcastle in New South Wales, which is where I live, kinda. I live in the council of Lake Macquarie not Newcastle.

Anyway this week we will have a brief look at Newcastle water.

Newcastle’s earliest of fresh water were wells and springs, as the population grew these soon became inadequate and a pipeline from the Walka waterworks at Maitland took over as the main supply in the 1880’s.

                                                     Chichester Dam Construction

In 1892 The Hunter District Water and Sewerage Board was established, taking over from local councils the job of building regional infrastructure.

It soon became apparent that the supply from the Hunter River wasn’t going to be adequate for the growing population and industry. So, they built Chichester Dam, near Dungog, with working starting during the first World War and was completed with water flowing into the city in 1923. It gravitated to big reservoirs mainly those at Waratah that fed the city’s steelworks and other related industries.

                                                    Hunter Water Board Pipeline Plan

So, for the first time in years Newcastle had a truly reliable water supply.

Just as important as water supply is sewerage, before the city had a proper sewerage system “nightsoil” had to be carted to depots. Otherwise, home burial of sewerage caused problems, contaminating water and spreading disease. Early council sewers emptied into the harbour.

If anyone is wondering what the term “nightsoil” means it is this, human excrement collected at night from buckets, cesspools, and privies.

The men who did the job of collecting the cans of human waste were called either “sanny men” or the “dunny man”. The dunny man would usually access clients’ outhouses via the back lane and would visit every night to ensure a clean outhouse for the next morning.

I couldn’t find when the use of this system finished but I do know that Tim can remember the “dunny man” coming and picking up the can from their dunny when he was very young. So I think it was sometime in the 1960’s.

An ocean outfall was seen as the answer with Bar Beach being the first choice by authorities, however political pressure shifted it to Merewether and plans were laid for a new treatment plant and outfall at Murdering Gully.

It’s hard to understand the sheer scale of the task of building the city’s sewers and the hidden pipelines which is in some cases a really big task to undertake.

The new outfall began working in 1936 it is around this time that the Water Board stop using the name Murdering Gully changing it to Burwood Beach.