Water cart in Melbourne c1841 (SLV) SEWERAGE In Melbourne in the 1860s, methods for disposing of human waste were very basic. A toilet consisted of a bucket that was housed in a wooden structure known as a pan closet toilet or thunderbox. The early solution was to cart human waste away to the outer fringes of Melbourne where it was often used as fertiliser by market gardeners or taken to the tip. Thunderboxes were only emptied about once a week by a nightman (so called because he collected pans at night by reaching through a small door in the back of the closet). Because the waste stayed in the pan for up to a week, thunderboxes were really smelly. Since walking to the thunderbox in the cold and dark of night was not very appealing, many people opted to use chamber pots at night instead (which were often emptied straight into street drains). To make matters worse, as Melbourne’s population grew the system of nightmen couldn't keep up and more and more people started disposing of their wastes directly into street drains.  Sewerage was introduced into Surrey Hills in the early 1900s.

MELBOURNE'S FIRST SEWERAGE SYSTEM Construction begins on Melbourne's first sewerage system in 1892. A system of pipes, sewers and drains is built – mostly by pick and shovel – to carry the city's waste to the Metropolitan Sewage Farm at Werribee. A pumping station is also built at Spotswood (now the site of the Scienceworks Museum) to send the city's waste to Werribee. The sewage flows by gravity to the lowest point, the pumping station in Spotswood, where massive steam pumps lift it to the rising mains to Brooklyn. The sewage then flows down the Main Outfall Sewer to Werribee Farm. Land filtration is the first sewage technique used at the farm. The treated effluent then flows into Port Phillip Bay. The photos and text are courtesy of Melbourne Water.

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