Ross Creek Reservoir

Still working today, this nineteenth century water supply dam was opened in 1867.
A network of tracks provides a range of walking opportunities; some suitable for walking with buggies and wheel chairs)
The circuit walk: Start at Malvern Street, just after the Leith Valley Touring Park. (If you stay there, the walk starts across the bridge.)
This walk is a small gem: only a 10 minute drive from the city centre and you are walking through bush filled with birdsong. And there’s the bonus of doing a circuit of one of the two remaining 19th Century dams still in use. The track takes you uphill with Ross Creek on one side and an impressive rock face on the other to the reservoir. As you follow the path around it, you can enjoy the surrounding trees and glimpses of the jetty and attractive valve tower. Marker posts dotted around the track are a puzzle: they’re connected to orienteering courses in the area.

**Ross Creek Reservior **
**Urban Infrastructure **
By Gavin McLean

Dunedin, or ‘Mud-edin’ as the wags called it, was struggling to provide basic services even before gold fever boosted its population from 2000 in 1860 to 20,000 by 1864. After one citizen condemned the water supply as ‘only fit for sewage’, the Town Board passed the Dunedin Waterworks Company Guaranteed Interest Ordinance of 1863 to encourage investors to build a new water supply. The Dunedin Waterworks Company Ltd did the job but so upset consumers with its charges that the Dunedin City Council took over the dam in 1875.

After selecting Ross Creek in Woodhaugh Valley, engineer Ralph Donkin began supervising builder David Proudfoot’s work in August 1865. Donkin designed the dams, number one (23 m high) and number two (10 m), and the photogenic valve tower, enhanced by its alternating bands of Port Chalmers breccia and Leith Valley andesite. The dams have a puddled clay core and hold 225 million litres. By the time work finished the company had replaced Donkin with first James Balfour and then John McGregor. The dam was opened on 9 December 1867 as the ‘Royal Albert Reservoir’, named after Queen Victoria’s late husband.

That name did not stick but although Ross Creek has had occasional problems with leakage, it was until relatively recently one of only three working 19th-century water supply dams left in New Zealand.

Image Credits: Jackie White