It held some 50,000 megalitres of drinking water, originally designed for the people of Sydney as part of the Upper Nepean Scheme. Construction of the dam commenced in 1880 and was completed in 1888/9.
The area was once known for its large hill, Prospect Hill, much of which has now been removed by quarrying. The eastern side of it has all but vanished under modern warehouses and roads, but the western side remains fairly intact, and gives the visitor an idea of how the countryside looked pre-1900.
The hill itself was once 117 metres high, but has been significantly reduced over the years.
A township grew up in the vicinity of today’s car park below the dam wall. As a result the first workers just pitched their tents or built gunyahs of timber, and lived near the dam
As the dam grew, so did the town. It was completely lacking in any facilities such as water or sanitation, or properly constructed roads. It eventually had a school, public hall, several hotels and temporary places of worship.
But with a population which peaked at around 4,000, and included men, women and children, not to mention pigs, chickens and dogs, the problems soon began to mount.
It was not long before the creek below the dam wall became victim to human pollution, in the form of sewage, kitchen waste, animals and even dead bodies.
More problems arose
When there was a period of drought and Prospect Creek slowed, or did not flow at all, more problems arose, both in transporting drinking water for the people of the camp, and the rise of disease.
When Parramatta Hospital could not cope with a typhoid outbreak, victims were conveyed by wagon to Blacktown, then train from Blacktown to Central, then transferred again by wagon to the Infectious Diseases Hospital near La Perouse.
Even if they survived that journey, they had to survive the primitive medical facilities of those times. Passengers on the train would have been unknowingly exposed to the disease.
The Prospect Camp, as it came to be known, also came to be known as a place of violence, shame, and disease, and the subject of many visits by health experts [usually a doctor from Parramatta] who would appeal for help from higher authority, but rarely received it.
It was, after much agitation, decided to remove the camp to higher ground on both sides of the creek, and this was done to a degree, but there were many who just decided to stay where they were – even though there were rumours that the dam wall was unstable and could break at any time and inundate them all.
After some years, a rudimentary hospital in a tent was provided, with a board floor. A public school was established, and the public hall, and these were two of the few buildings of permanent construction.
Hyland’s Inn was another, which still stands today. The other hotels, including the Nil Desperandum and the Commercial, have long since vanished.
The town grew, with its own butcher, baker, blacksmith, dressmakers, tent makers, tinkers, boarding houses and a pub, as well as two temperance lodges, a post office, school and two churches.
The Evening News stated that “the camp consists of tents and a few “slab and dab” huts, facing all ways, and erected upon no general or defined plan.
Bed and board
The furniture and effects of nearly all these latter tenements consists of logs driven into the ground and covered with sacking. These do duty for “bed and board”. The bedclothes (a couple of blankets) are thrown over the tent or rolled up in the morning.
At night they are cast over the sacks, and the bed is made… freely sprinkled around are four posted, partly sack covered closets, which do not even meet the wants of common decency, the occupant being in many cases visible to the passer-by.
These closets are fitted up with a rail for a seat, and very rarely is the trouble taken to dig a hole in the ground. Where there is not a closet or a dirty tent, there is a piggery, and when it is remembered that it is considered too much trouble to destroy or remove the offal in any way but by emptying it in the piggery, the aroma arising from these abominable nuisances can only be imagined.
“Several women of easy virtue in Sydney, having discovered that a large amount of money is paid away in the camp every fortnight, resolved to visit the place. Imagine a number of these depraved wretches preying upon hundreds of equally depraved denizens of the Prospect camp?”
It was not long before typhoid struck, which had a detrimental effect on Parramatta Hospital also, which could not cope with the large number of cases being delivered there. Many of those in the camp did not even bother to avail themselves of the primitive latrines.
Drinking water was brought in by a contractor, but many still took their supply from a shallow pool just below the dam wall, into which waste water from the camp itself drained.
The Sydney Mail stated that “after this season of drought, the only waterhole adjoining the camp is situated at the bottom of a slope down which the greater part of the sewage from that portion of the camp must necessarily flow.
The water here is of a colour and consistency more resembling pea soup than the crystal spring, and which, as analysis has proved, is full of unutterable abominations.
Drunken and rowdy behaviour continued to be a problem at the camp, particularly on Saturday nights, and most women kept themselves indoors as groups of men roamed the streets, fighting and brawling.
In June 1884, Walter John Adams, 28, shot his wife in the neck and back in a fit of jealousy. Mrs Adams was conveyed to Parramatta Hospital, but survived the attack, although she was paralysed on her left side. The search for Adams continued for some weeks. He was finally apprehended near Katoomba.
At his trial several months later, he was condemned to death, but this was commuted to life imprisonment, the first three years to be spent in irons.
Ironically, the search for Adams resulted in the discovery of another missing person, drowned in a nearby waterhole. A man’s coat was found floating on the surface, and police dragged the waterhole thinking it was Adams.
Another missing person
They discovered a dead body, that of Patrick McNamara from Ballarat, who had been missing for a week.
It was not long before there was another drowning, when Thomas Mills, a navvy employed at the dam, who had been drinking and suffering delirium tremens, claiming he was surrounded by hobgoblins, fell into the creek. His body was found downstream at Smithfield.
Yet it was not all pain and suffering. Concerts and dancing were held in the public hall or sometimes in a large tent, and the Irish National League in May 1886 held its first May procession and almost everyone turned out, “attracted by the singing of little girls dressed in white, under the leadership of that zealous priest, who has charge of the place, Father Holland…
After the children came the young men who have been manly and courageous enough to become Sons of Temperance. It was a pleasing sight to note the hard working men looking out of the tents with admiration at the innocent little children manifesting publicly their allegiance to Our Saviour and His Mother Mary…. The procession halted opposite a new hall which has been built for the Sons of Temperance.”
Concerts were a communal event, and everyone turned out, whether it be in a tent or one of the halls, although for a dance in December 1884, nobody turned up because of “the numerous attractions elsewhere”, including another dance in a private tent.
In August 1887 a concert was held to liquidate the debt on the previous children’s picnic.
In September 1886 it was reported that “to those whose eyes are accustomed to the uniformity of town and city architecture, a visit to this camp would unfold an extensive panorama of primitive and semi Bohemian style of dwellings.
The three hotels, the public school, the Roman Catholic and Church of England churches, and a few of the stores are of wood and iron”.
The article went on to describe the “denizens” as “a much mixed community of English, Irish, Scotch, French, Germans, Slavs, Bazza-Basuks, Italians, Swedes, and Russian Finns, Colonials, Danes and Dutch, Mongolians, Lascars, Chinkies, Yankee Doodles and Hindoos, together with a sprinkling of others”.
Although lacking in political correctness, this description provides us with a picture of the men who built the dam – from many different countries and racial backgrounds, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude today.
A newspaper in November 1887 had reported on the good health of the residents of the camp, and that there were no cases of fever, and no deaths for some time.
On the other hand, it added, there had been a large number of births. One can only imagine the experience of giving birth to a child in such a place, and so lacking in basic facilities, such as clean water and sanitation.
Other women probably acted as midwives, but there will never be a record of still born children, and those who died shortly after, who were simply buried in the bush.
While the men worked hard at the reservoir, the women suffered the daily grind of cleaning, cooking, and caring for children and their husbands, in substandard dwellings lacking basic amenities, that would today be described as squalid.
In February 1888 another tragedy occurred at the camp.
A dwelling composed of a wooden frame and covered with canvas and corn bags, occupied by Thomas Corbett, a labourer, and his wife and family, and two other people, caught fire.
A precarious condition
The fire occurred in the early hours and Mr Corbett was not present. His wife had left a candle burning under a curtain which had then fallen and ignited.
When roused, Mrs Corbett herself was enveloped in flames and rushed outside. A five year old child was rescued, a baby burnt to death, but Mrs Corbett was rushed to Parramatta Hospital “in a precarious condition”, where she later died.
In June 1888, a child named Florence McGoff was severely burnt.
Her mother was visiting a neighbour and saw Florrie run out of the back door, enveloped in flames. She died a few days later.
Another sad case occurred in October of that year. Catherine Boyce was the wife of a carter at the camp and had four children. She was in “delicate health” and of low spirits, and dreaded the idea of having to move again and travel for work, as the dam was nearing completion.
She drank some tea and went outside, but when she did not return, her husband sent two of the children to search for her.
They found her hanging from a nearby tree.
In December 1889, George Goodsell was killed by a rock fall while working on the face of the quarry, and two other workers injured who had been working on a platform.
Finally, the reservoir was completed in 1888/9, and gradually the people began to move away, taking their families and livestock with them.
Some sought employment in the local area, moving to Blacktown or Fairfield, while others travelled further afield. By 1893 the camp was described as deserted.
Prospect Reservoir now slumbers under an open sky, its roaring days forgotten. Surrounded by suburbia and industry, it is nonetheless a tranquil place to visit, and contemplate the hundreds of people who toiled there and even died there, in order to complete it.
Without knowing, they were the pioneers who built a dam to provide water to a growing city and which, more than 130 years later, still serves the people of Sydney as a standby water reservoir.
