Sewer System

There are three types of Sewerage Treatment Plants; primary, secondary and tertiary.

Primary & discharge locations:
Bellambi – Bellambi Point
Bondi – Deepwater ocean 2.2km
Fairfield – Orphan School Creek to Georges River
Malabar – Deepwater ocean 3.6km
North Head – Deepwater ocean 3.7km
Port Kembla – Red Point

Secondary & discharge locations:
Shellharbour – Offshore outfall 130m from Barrack Point
Warriewood – Turimetta Head

Tertiary & discharge locations:
Brooklyn – Hawkesbury River, Brooklyn
Cronulla – Potter Point, Kurnell
Hornsby Heights – Calna Creek to Berowra Creek
North Richmond – Redbank Creek to Hawkesbury River
Riverstone – Eastern Creek to South Creek
Wallacia – Warragamba River
Warriewood – Turimetta Head
West Hornsby – Waitara Creek to Berowra Creek
Wimmalee – Unnamed Creek to Nepean River

In total seventeen Sewerage Treatment Plants in New South Wales, a daunting task to attempt to visit them all and still manage to meet my art school commitments. In the Sewerage System there is more utilities than just Sewerage Treatment Plants. Such as Sewerage Treatment Ponds, Sewerage Pumping Stations, Sewer Mains, The Sewerage Transportation Systems and Sewer Vents.

Modern Sewer Vents come in nine different styles but invariably they are all long shafts ranging from nine to Thirty metres in height, and either free standing structures or wall bound. In the centre of Sydney there is a unique Sewer Vent the Hyde Park Obelisk or as it is affectionately known ‘Thornton’s Scent Bottle’. Located at the junction of Bathurst and Elizabeth Street, standing a full twenty two metres high the Hyde Park Obelisk was completed in 1857. Sydney’s first civic monument in honour of the mayor at the time George Thornton, a classy gesture turned on its head with a dual role as a vent for Sydney’s first sewage system. It is the only sewer vent shaft still built of sandstone left, a relic, modelled after Cleopatra’s Needle a gift to England. Complete with matching sphinxes the Hyde Park Obelisk has a filigree bronze pyramid the vent.