Golden Pipeline

National Trust of WA

Explore The Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail

A self-guided drive trail between the Perth Hills and Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields. Go with the Flow. Follow the water to discover more about the audacious goldfields water supply scheme and Engineer CY O’Connor.

Discover The people and the Scheme

“Future generations, I am quite certain will think of us and bless us for our far seeing 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” – Sir John Forrest

The People

Engineers

CY O’Connor’s Pipeline. Engineer in Chief Charles Yelverton O’Connor’s name is so inexorably linked with the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme that it is often called just that.

But there are others who helped at the start and engineers who, in the 1920s when it seemed the scheme would have to be abandoned, came up with innovative new ways to refurbish the pipeline.

More than 100 years since the scheme opened engineers are still coming up with solutions to keep it operating and efficient – computer systems to control the entire scheme from a desktop, a water treatment plant to ensure the quality of the supply, new pipework to lower the level of water in Mundaring Weir to minimize evaporation…

Engineers continue to be challenged by this remarkable scheme.

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