Our Forgotten Places: The Chewton Nightsoil Depot

    This extraordinary photo was taken in 1950, in Norman Park, a suburb of Brisbane. It shows a new housing subdivision and unlike modern subdivisions it's quite obviously unsewered. Those little sheds are all outdoor lavatories. These days we might call them loos, toilets, or, alternatively, by a less decorous term, outdoor dunnies. 

    While urban areas have generally led the way in connecting to sewerage systems, rural regions have, shall we say, brought up the rear! Today, in Central Victoria there is a range of sewerage options. Households unable to connect to the Coliban main sewer usually have a septic tank, although some of the more exotic options include composting toilets or the more prosaic 'long drop', a veritable hole in the ground. The latter option is increasingly rare given the now stringent council health department requirements designed to protect our water ways.

    While researching E. E. Bassett's market gardens  I came across an Allotments map which showed the location of a nightsoil depot a little over a kilometre from the market gardens, which got me thinking, but more of that later.

    The area chosen for the Chewton nightsoil depot back in 1900 (Mount Alexander Mail, Aug 1, page 2) needed to be isolated, a long distance from the nearest house. Even now, over a hundred years later, the 4.5 half acre depot is still an appreciable distance from the closest built up area of Chewton. The nightsoil allotment was then, and is still, an island surrounded by much larger properties. The lessee of the old depot tells me they've been unable to buy the land, perhaps because it's still covered by a special planning amendment which has never been revoked.

    So, all delicacy considered, what exactly IS nightsoil. In many towns, even up to the late 20th century, a truck would make its rounds of unsewered properties collecting pans from toilets. At its most simplest, these toilets consisted of a simply wooden bench with a hole of the requisite size positioned above a galvanised steel receptacle. In this advertisement for early toilets, the second photo is of the pan that was usually installed. Every week, or more often in the case of large families, the full pan was collected by the nightman (so called because in the early days they were required to work in the dark of night) and an empty pan left in its place.

     It's probable that few who caught a glimpse of the men engaged in their task gave a thought as to the destination of their offerings. The Chewton night soil depot shown above was one such end point, a little to the east of the Chewton cemetery, close to the present day Rod Hadfield car museum. Back in 1900 the horse drawn carts would wind their way up a minor creek valley (a tributary of Wattle Creek) to where their load of human waste was tipped into excavated pits, after which the men would spread soil over their dumped load and perhaps return to continue their rounds.

        

Photo: PROV

    For many years the nightsoil depot was protected by restrictions on tree harvesting. This aerial map from 1946 shows that it was an island of trees within a cleared wider area.

    Sadly, once the property was no longer used as a depot, the trees were cut down, probably to feed the fireplaces of local residents. There are few very old trees remaining in the area which seems to have been logged out on at least two occasions, the first, during the gold rush years.

    Here's how it looks today, the bleached stumps of the felled trees marking out the boundary of the old depot.

    

        However, one tree seems to have escaped the firewood merchants. This stringybark towers above the coffee bush and wattle regrowth which is slowly re-clothing the old nightsoil depot.

    This surviving tree can be seen below, within the white circle at the two o'clock position. Back in 2004, when the old depot was at its barest, the old nightsoil pits could clearly be seen on this Google Earth view.

    So this brings me to my thoughts about E. E. Bassett's market gardens. We know that, at least in the mid 19th century, it was considered acceptable for growers to fertilise their crops with night soil, purchased from contractors who otherwise would have had to deposit their loads at depots like the one in Chewton. As the century wore on, public health became a strong focus of municipal and shire councils and laws prohibiting the use of nightsoil were introduced. In the late 19th century, it was thought the trade in night soil had assisted in the spread of the deadly typhoid infections that plagued Melbourne (reference: Old Treasury Building website: On the Land: Market gardens). 

    It might be an objectionable idea now but it seems to me to be no coincidence that the extensive Werribee market gardens were established around the Werribee sewerage farm, although these days, the only benefit for the gardeners is ready access to recycled water from the treatment plant. Perhaps the introduction of the importation of phosphates from Nauru (which began around 1907) proved the death knell for the use of human waste as a fertiliser. But even as late as 1890 it was still occurring, even if only in rural areas safe from the scrutiny of Melbourne health inspectors. In that year the Kyneton Guardian (Mar 6, page 2) reports that 'nightmen' in Bendigo had been delivering their loads to Chinese market gardeners in Spring Gully. The Chinese gardeners were fined 10 pounds. Presumably, the men delivering their loads for payment weren't prosecuted. 

Chinese market garden , Melbourne, ca. 1900 (Old Treasury Building website)

    So given that E. E. Bassett's market gardens were less than a kilometre away and accessible by back roads well out of public sight, could he have made use of a ready supply of fertiliser? We know that in 1905 E. E. Bassett was fined 10 shillings for carrying vegetables on top of a load of manure (Bendigo Advertiser, Aug 5, page 6).  While it's most likely that this was horse or sheep manure it still begs the question.

    Nevertheless, the story of the night soil depots in various localities, including Chewton, is one less often told.

Night soil pit, Chewton night soil depot 2025