Victorian water supply plan : shewing trusts constituted and proposed under Water Conservation and Irrigation Act……1889

Mapmaker:

Stuart Murray (1837-1919), civil engineer and administrator, born Dundee, Scotland.

Attracted by gold he went to Victoria in 1855 and continued his studies privately, qualifying with distinction as a land and mining surveyor, architect and civil engineer. After settling in Kyneton, he was government mining surveyor in Daylesford, and in the early 1880s shared in a contract to construct the St Arnaud-Donald railway but lost financially. He also surveyed mining leases, settlements in northern Victoria under the Land Acts and for the Water Conservancy Board acquiring knowledge of the colony and a dedication to water conservation.

The report by Gordon and Black was the basis of the 1881 Water Conservancy Act which established rural waterworks trusts for stock and domestic purposes. The largest project was the United Echuca and Waranga Waterworks Trust in 1882 with Murray as its engineer. In 1884 Alfred Deakin appointed Murray secretary of the royal commission on water supply. It led to the making of the  Irrigation Act of 1886 which restricted riparian rights of landowners by vesting in the Crown the sole right to the use and control of practically all surface waters, and provided for certain national works and for loans to trusts for promoting irrigation undertakings and for reorganization of the Water Supply Department, then attached to the Department of Mines. In reviewing reports of proposed irrigation schemes Murray recommended as essential to all planning of water resources a comprehensive system of river gaugings. Appointed engineer-in-chief of the new department in 1886, he introduced the system and put Victoria years ahead of European countries in this field and was later made Chevalier du Mérite agricole by the French government. Under the new legislation ninety trusts were soon operating extensively but they ran into difficulties through the farmers’ reluctance to pay for water. By 1899 a Relief Act had written off three-quarters of the trusts’ liabilities, and in 1904 under the direction of George Swinburne, minister of water supply, new legislation was drafted and embodied in the 1905 Water Act. Control of irrigation development by local trusts was removed except for Mildura and centralized under a new instrumentality, the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, set up under the Act which also, as urged by Murray, vested in the Crown the beds and banks of all streams despite opposition from landed interests. Although over retiring age he was appointed chairman of the new commission in 1906-08.

In 1886-1908 Murray had planned and supervised such major water conservancy works as the Goulburn-Waranga National Channel (Stuart Murray Canal), the upper Coliban reservoir supplying Bendigo, Laanecoorie Weir on the Loddon, the Little Coliban reservoir supplying Kyneton, the storage basin on the Kow swamp, intake works from the Murray River and an outlet aqueduct known as the Macorna Channel; he also had charge of Geelong’s water supply and was supervising engineer of the works subject to government control. His greatest work was the Goulburn Weir, of which he was co-designer, with the Waranga storage and its channels. In 1902 as Victoria’s delegate to the interstate royal commission on the River Murray he was mainly responsible for the monumental report outlining development of irrigation and navigation on the river system, thus providing a basis for the interstate agreement reached in 1915. In 1909 he advised the South Australian government on river improvement works and was consulted by the New South Wales government on Sydney’s water supply and Burrinjuck reservoir.