City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYFigure 27Valve house at Preston Reservoir[Context, 2007]A caretaker’s cottage was built at Preston Reservoir in 1865 and the Preston office of theMMBW was opened in 1900. When the Maroondah system was opened in 1891 the aqueductterminated at the Junction Basin in Cheddar Road Preston, and the water was then piped toPreston Reservoir. As Melbourne’s demand for water increased in the twentieth century twonew concrete service reservoirs were added on the east side of High Street in 1909 and 1913.The second reservoir was constructed by John Monash’s Reinforced Concrete & Monier PipeConstruction Company, using the relatively new reinforced concrete technology. The Prestonreservoirs were for many years a vital link in the distribution of Melbourne’s water supply(Dingle and Doyle, 2003; Ritchie 1922).Although the pipeline traversed Darebin from end to end, it was of little benefit to most ofDarebin’s population for many years. Darebin’s local water supply will be outlined in Chapter5.4.5 Altering the environmentThe cost of developing Darebin’s resources and establishing its industries was the exploitationand transformation of its natural resources, landforms and streams. The results of theseactivities on the natural environment and heritage are discussed in Chapter 8.GrazingAs noted in Chapter 1, most of Darebin is thought to have been covered by grassy woodland(Oates & Taranto, 2001). In the first few years of the European settlement of Melbourne, largenumbers of sheep were imported from Tasmania 13 , and the good grazing lands in Darebinhardly could have escaped being used as a staging ground for livestock. Sheep grazing veryquickly altered the composition of the grassland understorey. The sheep preferentially grazedthe softest most nutritious feed - the yam daisies, lilies and orchids. There are reports of sheepscraping with their hooves to get to eat yam daisy tubers.Most of the land in Northcote was only sporadically grazed by the landowners as landspeculation and urban development set in, although others took advantage of the free pasturageavailable. Richard Howitt, who farmed at Alphington in the 1840s, noted that Melbourne’scattle were herded out to unoccupied lands every day to graze, and then herded back at night,and saw of his neighbours graze dairy cows for free on unoccupied private lands (Howitt,1945). One property that was continuously grazed was Pender's Grove, the unsuccessful boomsubdivision and closer settlement that was still largely undeveloped in the 1920s.The grazing history of Darebin means that remnants of the grassy native understoreyvegetation are very rarely anything near intact.13 41,332 head of sheep were in the Melbourne settlement by Nov 183653