Botany Water Reserves
The Botany Water Reserves is a heritage-listed area that was historically used as part of Sydney's water supply system. It is located at 1024 Botany Road, Mascot, New South Wales, Australia. The site is now reserved as parkland, also containing a golf course. It was designed by City Engineers, W. B. Rider, E. Bell, and Francis Bell. It is also known as Botany Dams, Botany Swamps, Botany Wetlands, Mill Stream, Bridge Pond, The Lakes Golf Club, Eastlakes Golf Course, Bonnie Doon Golf Club, and Astrolabe Park. The property is owned by Sydney Water, an agency of the Government of New South Wales. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 18 November 1999.
History
On 29 April 1770 Captain James Cook made his first landfall in Australia at Botany Bay. The botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, and his Swedish assistant, Daniel Solander from Cook's ship, spent several days ashore collecting vast numbers of previously unknown plants. Cook was in two minds about a suitable name for the Bay – his journal first refers to it as Stingray's Harbour, then as Botanist Bay, then both were crossed out and the present Botany Bay inserted, no doubt because of Banks and Solander's work. Since its name comes from the Bay on which it stands, Botany can well claim to have the oldest English place name in Australia.Cook's recommendation and Banks' enthusiasm were largely responsible for the British Government's decision to found a penal settlement at Botany Bay. When Governor Phillip arrived in mid-summer in 1788 however, he found the harbour shallow and exposed, and the shore swampy and lacking sources of fresh water. As a result, the First Fleet sailed on to Port Jackson, finding a more suitable site for settlement at Sydney Cove.
Botany was first planned as an agricultural district, and the principal industry was to be market gardening. Instead it became an industrial area, boasting a fellmonger's yard and a slaughter works. As early as 1809, Mr E. Redmond came to settle in the district, but the first important developer was Simeon Lord, who built a fulling mill in 1815 on the site that later became that of the old water works. In 1823 he received a grant of, followed by further grants. Part of the estate was subdivided by 1887. Lord, the "merchant prince of Botany Bay", manufactured fine wool cloth, and was also one of the merchants instrumental in the founding of Sydney Hospital. He gave land for the sites of two early churches in Botany, and Lord Street is named after him. Banksia Street, Sir Joseph Banks Park and Booralee Park all commemorate those early days.
The Sydney Water Works were established in Botany in 1858 and were fed by the many springs in the area. In 1886, the last year of full pumping, 1864 million gallons of water were supplied to Sydney from these water works. Although the scheme was Sydney's major source of water for 30 years, it did not supply water in the Botany area and local residents depended on natural sources and tanks.
Following European colonisation the first substantial interventions in the area occurred in 1815 when the enterprising merchant Simeon Lord had a dam constructed to the west of the present Botany Road for the purpose of establishing the colony's first woollen mill. A second dam was constructed near the present Engine House ruins for a flour mill. This mill continued operating until about 1847 while the textile factory was closed by about 1856.
From 13 July 1855 the City Council began resuming land around, and including, the Botany wetlands for the city's main water supply scheme – the first time land resumptions were made for this purpose. Of this land about 75 acres of Lord's estate was resumed which included his house, the mill sites, various cottages and the earthworks associated with Lord's mill dams.
The initial water supply scheme of the mid-1850s, by the City Engineer W. B. Rider, was abandoned with the appointment of Edward Bell to the position. The surviving Engine House and chimney date from the implementation, in the late 1850s, of Bell's scheme while the stone retaining walls for the Engine Pond and outlet sluice probably date from the 1870s work on the Engine Pond augmentation. Between 1866 and the mid-1870s six dams were constructed, and reconstructed for various reasons, from the Mill Pond to Gardeners Road using piling of sheet timber facing filled with sand forming a core of a turfed bank. In 1859 a 30" sand-cast iron main was completed between the Engine House and the Crown Street reservoir. The pipes were made in Scotland in 1856 and machined with such remarkably fine tolerance that, of the total length of 4 miles, the outside diameter varied by only 6mm and allowed the pipes to be laid without jointing material. Part of this easement coincides with the present study area in the vicinity of the Engine House.
Drawing on a 1982 thesis of Margaret Simpson, the Thorp et al. study indicates that about 80 trees – "Norfolk Pines, Moreton Bay Figs, Weeping Figs, Sweet Scented Pines and Stone Pines" – were planted along the access road from Botany and elsewhere on the site in 1869. Works for the augmentation of water storage at Botany continued throughout the 1870s including the addition of water stored in the Bunnerong Dam by way of a pipe to the No 4 Pond. The then Bunnerong Road was moved and ran along the top of this dam wall.
By the early 1880s the Upper Nepean Scheme was well underway and in November 1886 the Nepean-supplied water effectively ended the general supply of Sydney's water from the Botany system. Even intermittent emergency use of the system ceased by 1893 so that the Engine House machinery was finally decommissioned with pumping equipment and boilers sold at auction in 1896. In 1894 various local industrial uses – such as wool scourers and tanners – were permitted to return to the wetland vicinity through leases until 1947.
While these major improvement programs for Sydney's water supply were being put into place it also became clear – chiefly from an increasingly polluted harbour – that substantial works were needed to deal with the sewage of Sydney and its immediate suburbs. After the Board of Water Supply and Sewerage was formed in 1888 the basis of what is presently Sydney's largest sewerage system was commenced. As part of its responsibilities the new Board assumed control of various recent works of the Public Works Department, one of which was the first of the new sewer mains from the City to the Botany Sewage Farm established about 1886. Another main was added in 1898 which linked various western suburbs to the Sewage Farm. However, by the turn of the century the usefulness of the Farm was fast diminishing such that the southern and western sewerage systems were amalgamated and extended, from 1909, to a new ocean outfall at Malabar while the much expanded Botany Sewage Farm was closed. This work – known as the Southern and Western Sewer Ocean Outfall System or, usually, SWSOOS No 1 – was completed in 1916 under the direction of Chief Engineer EM de Burgh.
Further growth of Sydney's suburbs and resultant extensions to this sewerage network necessitated an augmentation of the system, by duplication known as SWSOOS No 2, during 1936 to 1941. Both mains were required to cross the Cooks River by inverted syphons. The current SWSOOS network represents Sydney's largest sewerage system and envelops mains that were constructed from the 1880s through the 1890s, 1900s, 1910s to 1940s. Other individually significant components of the SWSOOS network that occur in the vicinity of the present site include the twin major inverted syphons and syphonic overflows and the 1896 sewer vent at West Botany Street, Arncliffe.
Within the site the existing engine house chimney was retired for water supply use in 1888, left unused for 28 years then, after being shortened, re-used as a vent in 1916 as part of the work for the new SWSOOS. Various buildings, associated with the new sewerage system, were added to the west. During the 1940s the chimney was further truncated to its present height along with the diversion of the mouth of the Cooks River into Botany Bay and substantial filling of the Engine and Mill Ponds as part of a major expansion and upgrade of airport facilities. From the 1970s a greater appreciation of the special historical and environmental values of the place was apparent through the commissioning of a range of studies to record and assess its significance. However further incursions continued with the 1988 construction of Southern Cross Drive through the middle of the Engine Pond, reclamation by the DMR and more recent works associated with the pre-Olympics upgrade of the airport.
The Lakes Golf Club (1928)
In 1928 construction of a clubhouse near Gardeners Road was commenced for the Lakes Golf Club with the course – to the west and north of the chain of ponds – opening in 1930.About 1960 the Eastlakes Golf Club was established with an 18-hole course on the eastern and southern side of the ponds. The neighbouring course to the northeast, The Australian Golf Club, was established in 1904 and in the same year it was host for the first Australian open golf title which was won by Michael Scott. Both the Lakes and Australian golf courses have been consistently ranked in the top five golf courses in New South Wales for many years.
The Lakes Golf Club practice precinct was excavated on a number of occasions from 1928 to 1970. In the early 1970s the south-eastern area of this land was bulldozed and redeveloped as part of the overall golf course design as a direct result of the state government requiring some of the golf course land to construct Southern Cross Drive. This included extensive excavation of the area of the practice precinct of the golf course. In the mid-1970s some of the practice precinct area formed part of the tennis court construction which required bulldozing the area to prepare the ground for new tennis courts. This was conducted as part of construction of the golf course clubhouse.
In the early 2000s the practice precinct was renovated as part of a plan to improve course facilities for practice, and to have the course fit with the natural contours and appearance of the sandy dunes and lakes that dominate its site. This included extensive disturbance of the practice precinct area. In 2005 a new club house was built and this resulted in removal of the tennis courts. The practice precinct and some of the driving range tee was bulldozed to remove the tennis courts and then construct the practice chipping area.
From 2007–09 the entire Lakes Golf Course underwent a comprehensive renovation which included extensive construction works to the south-western section of the practice precinct area. This involved use of a bulldozer and other construction equipment to construct the 10th tees and the area in front of them. This included the small ridge between the driving range tee and the front of the current 10th hole tees.