The Desiccator Difficulty

Local politics of planning deeply impacted sanitary technology in nineteenth-century Melbourne. The population had skyrocketed and local corporations (councils) were squabbling over where to send their waste.

‘Desiccators’, large machines that used steam and beaters to reduce waste into a powder that could be sold as fertilizer, were one solution put forward. Locations were proposed all over the city but the affluent south-eastern suburbs would not accept them in their community. The only one built was on the banks of the Railway Coal canal, just south of Dynon Road.

This fragmentation of accountable governance and council stand-offs heavily contributed to the city’s new nickname: Smellbourne.