Deserts of industry, gardens of desire: landscape transformation and enterprising character in a Western Australian town

Abstract

In the hills above Perth, the Mundaring Weir is the first and by far the largest of a number of reservoirs forming an extensive water catchment and distribution scheme completed in I903, just two years after Australia's federation. From Mundanng, a steel pipeline of some 30 mches diameter strikes out across the landscape of Western Australia, through the eucalypt forests of the Darling Ranges, across the valley of the A von River and then on through the broad wheat belt past agricultural towns such as Northam, Merredin and Kellerberrin, before finally reaching the arid Goldfields 351 miles away (figure I). Placed amid picnic areas and lookout points at Mundaring, commemorative plaques descnbe the structure and history of the Goldfields water scheme and argue its role in the economic development of the state, while a museum is dedicated to Charles O'Connor, the engineer who designed and built the scheme. Through scenography and considered curatorship, VIsitors are treated to a grandiose spectacle of the triumph of science and technology over an untamed landscape. A pilgrimage to Mundaring allows one, in the words of then Premier, Sir John Forrest, at the armouncement of the scheme in 1895, ‘some share of the noble work of converting arid country into a flourishing garden’. Of Forrest's promise to bring a river of pure water to the mining town of Coolgardie, a local historian recorded that: ‘“Future generations,” he had said, “will bless us for our farseeing patriotism; and it will be said of us, as Isaiah said of old, ’They made a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert’”’.1