Nestled under the West Gate Bridge and behind Scienceworks sits a 19th century industrial relic, its architectural grandeur a seeming contrast with its former purpose.
The heritage-listed Spotswood Pumping Station, built by the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works in 1897, once handled all of Melbourne’s human waste or “night soil” as it was euphemistically called in earlier days.
Painstakingly restored and maintained by volunteers, the pumping station has opened for daily guided tours.
The tours will feature a steam engine in action.
Museum Victoria senior engineering and transport curator Mathew Churchward says Melbourne’s booming 1850s population lacked a decent sanitation system.
“In the 1870s, 1880s there’d been a series of outbreaks of infectious diseases … causing lots of illness and death,” he said.
“The solution was seen to create a city-wide sewerage system which would collect all the industrial and domestic sewage and bring it to a central site where it could be treated.”
The station ceased operation in 1965.
Since then, the building has been sought out by filmmakers and tourists.
It was transformed into the Halls of Justice for the original Mad Max in 1979 and featured as a 1920s factory in the Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries TV series. Much of the station’s machinery hasn’t changed much since the era of fictional detective Phryne Fisher.
Volunteers have painstakingly restored several of the station’s steam engines. Engine No.5, built by Hathorn, Davey and Co in Leeds, England, was brought out by ship and is believed to be the oldest of its type in the world. It weighs about 45 tonnes and took 12 months to install and start operating in 1901.
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