Golden Pipeline

What a contrast between the two pumping station sites you can visit in this section.

At No 7, Gilgai, nothing remains but the tank that received the water from No 6 and from which No 7’s engines drew the precious liquid to pump further on its journey east. Yet its seeming emptiness is what gives this site its powerful sense of isolation.

Walk around to read about and see evidence of the lives the workers made here with their families in order to keep the water flowing. No 8 is the most complete of the stations with both boilers and engines still in place and evokes a sense of being frozen in time. Woolgangie, a short return trip on a dirt track off Great Eastern Highway, was where the harsh reality of the lack of water became dramatically apparent in 1895.