The Barwon Sewer Aqueduct is a heritage-listed aqueduct across the Barwon River at Goat Island, Breakwater, Victoria, Australia. It was designed by engineer E. G. Stone and was erected between 1913-1915. It would appear to be the only one of its kind in Australia in terms of its length and the use of Considère's construction technique. The aqueduct appears to be the last example in Australia of Armand Considère's system of reinforcing for concrete structures. It was added to the Victorian Heritage Register on 23 October 1991.
Description
The Barwon Sewer Aqueduct straddles the Barwon River flood plain at Breakwater, south of Geelong. According to the literature, it is the longest and largest structure built according to the Considère system. The aqueduct consists of 14 spans that stretch over a length of 750 meters (2,424 feet). Each pier is the center of a cantilevered truss, the gap between trusses bridged by girders carrying the ovoid concrete sewer pipe and a walkway, both of which span the bridge. In contrast to the straightforward expression of structure in the cantilevered trusses and walkway, the piers are capped by simple architectural forms which echo the details of Egyptian pylons and Classical Triumphal Arches.
In keeping with many such early reinforced concrete bridges and engineering works (as opposed to buildings) the aqueduct could have been executed at a much larger scale and still retained its visual qualities. Bridges such as the Loddon Bridge (1911), Victoria, and the Railway Bridge (1910) near Lockyer Creek, Queensland, are good, contemporary examples which share this quality, which in some cases could be equated with the simplicity of the earlier, timber trestle-bridges.
History
The last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century were a period of rapid urban development in the major cities, requiring investment in urban infrastructure including railways, roads and water, electricity and gas and in sewerage systems. Developments in Sydney and Melbourne were reflected at a regional level in large towns and cities such as Geelong in Victoria.
The Geelong Commissioners appointed to implement a sewerage scheme for Geelong visited the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works and the Sydney Board in July 1910. A visit was also made to Adelaide in September 1910. On 1 June 1910, surveyor Charles Campbell Breen had already begun work on the survey alignment for a sewer to serve Geelong. The Geelong Commissioners obtained permission for the Boards engineer, Mr C. E. Oliver, to report on the feasibility of using a sewerage farm at Geelong. Mr. Oliver concluded that it was practicable to do so at Point Henry, but did not go so far as to recommend doing so. Mr. Oliver had acted as a Royal Commissioner into the Perth Sewerage System in July 1909 (Cooke, 1981: 56-69).
One of the first steps in the sewerage scheme for the Geelong Waterworks and Sewerage Trust District was the fixing of appropriate boundaries in accordance with the provisions of the relevant Act. Boundaries were approved in November 1910 and encompassed an area of 8,081 acres. The area at Werribee servicing Melbourne was of the order of 26,000 acres. The Royal Commission on Sanitation in Britain had recently studied the issue of fecal matter discharge into streams. Mr. R. T. Mackay, Chief Engineer to the Geelong Water Works and Sewerage Trust, was aware that the flow of the Barwon River did not permit the necessary standards except for limited periods. A survey of the coastal currents along the coast was carried out by Mr. Breen, as an alternative way of discharging treated sewage. The final recommendation by Mr Mackay was that an ocean outfall was the best way of sewage disposal while the simplicity of the scheme made for economy. The estimated cost of the outfall proposal was £285,992 compared to £261,878 for a sewerage farm. The successful contractor, Messrs Stone and Siddeley, established a factory adjacent to the railway at Geelong to manufacture the pre-cast sections of sewer pipe, also winning the contract to lay the pipes in some areas as well as that for the design and construction of an aqueduct across the Barwon River. Mr R. Taylor, the forerunner of Rocla Pipes, another concrete product manufacturer, was also involved in the work of supplying and laying sewage pipes as well as the construction of pumping stations (Cooke, 1981: 56-69).