This is a brief history of water supply in the Hastings beginning tens of thousands of years ago with the Birpai people.

The Birpai People And Water

The first people to drink from the beautiful waters of the 'Dhoongang' or Hastings River were the Aboriginal people of the Birpai Nation.

Water was essential to the Birpai people's survival. They had to make sure that wherever they set up camp; there was a fresh water source nearby.

The Birpai men built bark canoes to travel on the rivers and creeks. They made wooden spears to hunt fish.

Water played an important role in the very first meeting between the white people and the Birpai people in the Hastings. When John Oxley's expedition entered Birpai country in 1819 the Elders sent a party of young men to meet them at Yippin Creek. The Elders knew that the Europeans were coming because the 'cleverfellas' had carried the news with their message sticks over the trade routes.

The Europeans asked for a bark canoe and gave the young men a sharp axe in exchange.

The Elders decided that although the Europeans were strange they seemed harmless enough and should be left to their own devices.

Brief Timeline 

• The original white settlers used to draw their fresh water from Wrights and Kooloonbung Creeks and other watercourses. They also diverted water from an underground stream beside Clarence Street using a convict-constructed barrel drain.
• The first wells were unlined shafts and later wells were lined with timber or clay-bricks. At first buckets were used to draw water from the wells. Buckets were eventually replaced by mechanical and rotary pumps.
• A convict chain gang built the Hastings' first dam on Kooloonbung Creek with a timber bridge above it prior to 1843.
• The Hastings Shire Council, which was based in Wauchope, decided in 1939 to have its own water supply scheme and to build the Blue Creek Dam.
• The Port Macquarie Water Supply Scheme Project began in 1944. Port Macquarie Municipal Council decided Port Macquarie's water should come from a sand bed southwest of the residential area. (Site of current Greenmeadows Estate)
• The Koree #1 Pumping Station and 1.1 Mega Litre (ML) Rosewood Road Balance Tank were built in 1955.
• In 1959 the Wauchope and Port Macquarie joined their water pipes together. A joint Hastings water supply at last!
• A temporary 90.8 ML off-creek storage dam and pumping station were built at O'Briens Road in 1970.
• The 2,500 ML Port Macquarie Off-Creek Storage Dam was completed in 1978.
• The 10,000 ML Cowarra Off-Creek Storage Dam was the result of decades of scientific and environmental planning. Completed 2001.
• Water reclamation - a new frontier in water management. The Hindman Street Reclaimed Water Treatment Plant has been constructed to produce highly treated recycled wastewater for non-potable uses such as watering parks, gardens and sporting fields. The plant will have the capacity to recycle up to 2 megalitres of treated wastewater per day.

Download

 History of the Hastings District Water Supply Scheme (859KB) by Robert Scott.