Mundaring Weir

Mundaring Weir is a dam located 39km from Perth, Western Australia in the Darling Scarp. The dam and reservoir form the boundary between the suburbs of Reservoir and Sawyers Valley. The dam impounds the Helena River.HistoryA soldier, Ensign Robert Dale, became the first European to explore the region in 1829.European populations did not grow significantly until construction of the dam in the late 1890s. This involved the building of a railway line from Mundaring to the Mundaring Weir site. The Irish Australian engineer C. Y. O'Connor was involved in the design of a scheme that transported water to the Eastern Goldfields of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in the eastern part of Western Australia.The weir was completed in 1903.The lake created by the dam was known as the Helena River Reservoir, however it is now known as Lake C.Y. O'Connor.The owner of the dam, the Water Corporation, refers to the weir as Mundaring Dam on its website, but no other authority, such as Geographic Names, or Geosciences Australia uses this term. The Mundaring Shire uses an image of the Mundaring Weir in its logo.Work commenced to raise the dam in the late 1940s, and was completed in November 1951.In the early 1970s the downstream dam from the weir—the Lower Helena Pumpback Dam—was constructed.