Engineering Miracles

Perth, Western Australia is at sea level.

Kalgoorlie, 340 MILES to the East is at 1,700 feet altitude.

In the late 1890s the population of Western Australia (one million square miles, one-third the area of the USA) had a population of just sixty-five thousand.

Charles Yelverton O’Connor devised a scheme to get water to flow from Perth to Kalgoorlie most of the way by gravity.

This would be an engineering miracle even with hydraulic bulldozers and back-hoes, but pick and shovel? And horses, that needed drinking water, oats and hay? In the desert?

Learn why the Great Eastern Highway is a series of dog-legs.

Learn why, in summers that were 40ºc in the shade for weeks on end, the doctor was considered fortunate because his house had a hot-water tank!

Truly, a topsy-turvy place.

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