Water in inexhaustible quantities lies under Boonah?
Seems improbable.
Yet it was a statement made by Samuel Cossart the Chairman of the Boonah Shire Council in 1939 when answering critics of a scheme to procure water for a town supply from outside of town. Everyone knew of the wells in properties along High Street that supplied businesses in the early days.
“Why go to the expense of piping water in, when all that water lay under their feet,” they asked.
It was Cossart’s third year as Chair of the recently renamed Goolman Shire and a supply for the towns of Boonah and Kalbar led to many torrid debates on the floor of the Council chambers, in the Fassifern Guardian and out on the streets.
The need for a cheap reticulated supply for town residents and public institutions such as the hospital was not up for debate but rather how to procure it without ratepayers facing an enormous annual rates bill. debate had been simmering and regularly coming to the boil since 1902, the most crippling year of the Federation drought. In that year, residents and farmers were obliged to line up daily at the natural spring-fed waterhole at Dugandan to source water for drinking and stock purposes.
Towards the end of World War I, that waterhole was cleaned out, enlarged and deepened and became what we know as the Dugandan lagoon. The work was done to assure a water supply for the Boonah Butter Factory and the Boonah Hospital.
This work, and the knowledge that the lagoon was spring-fed, prompted councillors and their constituents to start suggesting that the underground reserves on the Dugandan flat could be tapped into for the whole town.
Those suggestions bubbled along for half a dozen years but as had been the case since 1902, the greatest impetus for a resurgence of discussion about a town water supply, was fire.
The first push came very soon after the Federation drought broke, when in February 1903, all the buildings which stood between the Post Office and up to the Cultural Centre were lost in a fire. It was only the presence of a laneway at either end that enabled the citizens to stop the loss of more buildings as the only means of fighting the fire was a bucket brigade from tanks. Fire heated up the discussion again in February 1912, when four shops and a residence on the southern side of today’s Boonah Business Supplies building were lost in a blaze. And again, 12 years later when the new shops on the same site were reduced to ashes.
That year, Council engaged Brisbane engineer, John Kemp to come up with plans and costings for a water scheme.
His recommendations were revealed at a public meeting in September 1924 - he proposed that 60,000 gallons (270,000 litres) be pumped from the well at Dugandan [between the two waterholes on the flat] up to a reservoir on Highbury Hill [Hospital Hill] where it would be treated. The cost was anticipated to be in the vicinity of £24,000.
The water from the well was considered of drinkable quality although it was heavy in minerals.
Cost and uncertainty that the well could produce 60,000 gallons of water per day, caused the bid for a town water supply to falter again.
One of the strongest proponents of the town supply was Samuel Cossart, first as a member of the Boonah Progress Association and then as Council Chairman from 1936 to 1943.
He came under fire in 1939, initially for failing to do enough to make a town supply happen and then for failing to give … “due consideration to tapping into the enormous underground reserves right under his feet”.
Cossart knew the town and its history intimately and it was during one of his forceful rebuffs of his detractors during a Council meeting that he revealed the location of all the old wells in the CBD.
The furore had erupted earlier in the year when Cossart proposed that the water supply for Kalbar and Boonah be drawn from Reynolds Creek at Charlwood. “Why go to the expense of bringing it all the way from there when we have abundant subterranean supplies right in the town of Boonah?” was the cry of his opponents.
Cossart’s reply: “As a matter of fact, the water is here all right and is available probably in inexhaustible quantities.”
But … “hundreds of pounds have been spent in boring operations in procuring it, but unfortunately none of the water is in any way suitable for domestic purposes, and to suggest reticulating that to the townspeople is a method of inspiration not likely to meet with favour.”
He went on to give details of some of the town’s “natural underground basins” - all had been tested and all had been found as unsuitable for use as drinking water or even for use in watering gardens …
The wells he spoke of were:
• the Rural School [today’s Boonah State School] bore put down by the Department of Public Instruction some years ago for watering plants.
• the Boonah Butter Factory bore [on site at the factory] had an unlimited supply but is too mineralised to use for boilers, but used in small quantities where the effects of mineralisation does not matter
• Vellacott’s bore [within today’s Dover & Son’s building at the corner of High Street and Railway Street] used years ago in the bottling of spa water, cordials and aerated drinks.
• Simon’s Hotel bore [between today’s Maudsley & Sons Service Station and Simon’s Tavern].
• the Humphries and Tow bore [in today’s IGA carpark].
• the Australian Hotel bore.
• the well between the two lagoons of fresh water on Dugandan Flat - not quite so mineralised as the other waters, but quite impossible for domestic purposes without treatment.
• many other bores around Dugandan and Boonah have been abandoned, as in some cases the water was so bad that the overflow killed the grass. Most of the wells Cossart quoted as producing water unsuitable for drinking had in fact been used for exactly that in the early growth years of the town. Reading through newspapers as far back as the mid 1880s, there is an occasional reference to the well water tasting ‘brackish’, but drinkable.
An analysis by the Council in 1922 of samples of water from a number of bores in the town indicated that the quality of the underground supply had dropped markedly due to increased levels of sodium chloride.
By 1939, an analysis of one of the same wells showed a further increase in the sodium chloride content of the water.
To put the salt level into context - the World Health Organisation standard for sodium chloride content in potable water is up to 200 milligrams per litre - the sodium chloride content in the well water was 2,833 milligrams per litre.
So what caused the town’s potable underground supply to become undrinkable?
It may be as simple as over use - too much water was drawn out of the underground reservoir, salt water filled the void in a continual process, which led to ever increasing levels of ‘saltiness’.
And as salt water is denser than freshwater, when rainwater seeped down into the underground system it wouldn’t mix and mingle but remained on top - so while a bore or well may initially produce potable water, once it drops to a certain level quality it becomes unsuitable.
As renowned geologist Dr John Jackson explained … pushing freshwater into salt water is like trying to mix oil and water … it won’t happen.
back to a town water supply …
The debate continued to simmer and boil and simmer and boil until finally in 1956, the Boonah and Kalbar water supply scheme was completed.
Water for the scheme was sourced from Reynolds Creek at Charlwood and later, after the construction of Moogerah Dam, from the Reynold Creek at Gough’s Crossing.
