Monday, 4 June 2012

William Thwaites, the engineer for marvelous Melbourne

One of the books i got from the library a while back was entitled 'The engineer to marvelous Melbourne' by Robert La Nauze, sounds catchy, doesn't it?

Introducing William

Well, i was hooked by the title, closer inspection was warranted, and the funny thing about reading a book about a city i have occupied (not illegally) is you start to learn little bits about it, and pretty soon, the picture starts fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle and before you know it, every where i look, there a story and another and it goes on!

Most of this story is happening underground, but people like water, most people don't really think about it when flushing the toilet and not dying from water borne diseases, but it wasn't always that way you know?

Every year you see 'The most livable city in the world' ratings and it's Melbourne consistently in the top 3, always.

What I've learnt is, Melbourne wasn't always marvelous, it was known as 'Malodorous Melbourne', sewage was dumped in Princess park at night, it was known as 'Smellbourne', William Thwaites went to Melbourne University, so his nose would have been very familiar to 'Smellbourne'

Melbourne was also known as 'Batmania' after John Batman, they needed a hero to make it a livable city and William was the man that stepped up to the job.

Heros wanted

 From the 1840s on, the waters of the Yarra River were unsuitable for domestic usage.
"On the riverside entrails, blood, gore and the stripped carcases of rotting animals trailed into the river, creating a malodorous welcome to the newly arrived immigrant."

The big 3 contributions from William Thwaites are
  1. He designed the water system
  2. He designed the Sewage system
  3. He helped drain the marsh lands around the city and curb the Typhoid epidemic (especially in Collingwood, South Melbourne and Port Melbourne)
He also supplied the water to the Botanical gardens and Albert park VIA the Dight's Falls scheme, it could not have happened without him.

There seems to have always been a problem with property speculators in Melbourne too? He had vulchers looking over his shoulder trying to figure out how they could make easy $$ from his work  
When he drained the Elwood swamp, it was government money that was loaned to government officials at low rates, to themselves.
Anything new there?

Problems were most apparent in 'Marvellous Melbourne' - the Brisbane of the 1880s - where speculation in property development and land purchases saw a slowing of real estate sales in late 1880s and difficulties for an unusual number of builders, estate agents and builders. Bursting of the bubble in 1891 saw the collapse of building societies and mortgage banks. That was exacerbated by weaknesses in corporate governance (in particular inadequate disclosure and ineffective restrictions on insider dealings by company executives and directors). Urban property values sank by over 64% in four years.

Some of the officials went to jail, it was noted that one government officials lawyer did a very good job of keeping him out of jail, funny that? Not much has changed since the 1880's?

The movie 'Chinatown' came to mind, starring Jack Nicholson, if you haven't seen it, it's about the land speculation and water distribution that happened in Los Angeles, very similar indeed!


Around the 1880's Melbourne was quite a dreadful place to live, Typhoid was so common, it was known as 'Colonial disease', the place needed a super hero, the country was pretty young, all the help was coming from England, all the approval for engineering projects had to be approved by an English engineer, sometimes in England, people were drinking from the Yarra, dumping sewage there, bathing there, doesn't sound pleasant does it? 

The only person with the credentials to take on such a project was William Thwaites, a home grown engineer that was just brilliant at everything he did, he was better than any of the so called English engineers, at the time the Sewage project was the biggest sewage project in the world, bigger than the Sewers of London.

The success of William Thwaites proved to the world that Australia could stand on their own two feet, with out England's help and the design of his system did not come under stress until the 1960's

Joseph Bazalgette

Like Joseph Bazalgette, in London when he designed the London sewers, (which is one of the wonders of the modern world) Mr Twaites biggest issue was dealing with the establishment and people that did not have the kind of vision that he had for the city.

Whats interesting is, the very first undertaking of the Melbourne water project was to plant trees to protect the project against the winds and without trees it doesn't rain

He vision of what Melbourne could be must of been immense and that's the standard he built the sewers, he had a clear grasp of what the water levels would be like in the Summer and Winter, the water needed to be flowing consistently, that's why some of the pipelines needed to be smaller rather than bigger, he figured all this out himself, the English engineer system would have been chaotic for Melbourne! 
In dealing with the bureaucracy of the time, arguing with them would have been a waste of time, What he did was to suggest 8 different designs, they went from A to H

Option C was chosen as the option the English engineer James Mansergh, (who came for a few weeks to oversee the design) 

After the design had been selected, what William did was to say?
'Look i can make the design better here, it all approved with James Mansergh.....and here, here, here, here, here' 
Until pretty much it was a totally different design. He got grilled about his design too, but he had all the evidence to support his design


It seems like he figured out when dealing with bureaucracy, you need to be like an illusionist and keep people distracted long enough until they see the see the end result, like giving a baby a shiny spoon. 

Like Robert Stevensons that designed and built the Bell rock lighthouse, who had a similar issue and just kept the bureaucrats distracted, long enough to do what he needed to do.

Bell rock lighthouse, nearing completion (computer generated image)

William Thwaites had ideas for generating electricity from the Yarra.
He held lectures teaching the public about the sewage solution, even teaching the public how to flush a to flush a toilet (obviously this was before the half flush?)
He licensed the plumbers and they were made sit exams
He commissioned a survey of the entire city, and every house before work commenced for the sewerage project

I saw a documentary about the water situation in Mexico city, the first thing they did was to plant trees around the city, without trees it does not rain, i wonder did William know this?

Whats interesting about William Thwaites was his calculations were exactly right, every time, he did surveys, experiments long before anybody else did and the results were the basis of his calculations.
The expert that was sent from England for 8 weeks to make recommendations could not have done much without the research William T. did, he was light years ahead of engineers at the time.
When ever a cheaper alternative of his work was approved, it always ended up being near or more than what he estimated.

Elwood Canals, that was Williams idea too

His recommendations to projects saved the city huge amounts of money, it's a wonder why there isn't a day for him, he didn't go to war but he won the war on Typhoid and saved so many peoples lives that lived in Melbourne, he brought the mortality rate down from 20 people per 1000 to 13 people per 1000 with draining the lands in Melbourne

He also submitted a survey to build a tunnel under where the West Gate bridge is today.

 No other person did more for Melbourne than William Thwaits and every time i use water or flush a toilet i think of him and what he did.

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