When completed the scheme included a pumping station, rising main, reservoir on Tower Hill, chimney stack, engineer's residence, workers' cottages, provisional school, tram track, bridge across the Burdekin River and several trestle bridges to carry the rising main across small creeks between the pumping station and the reservoir in the town.

The project cost around £80,000, exclusive of ongoing maintenance, the building of a weir in 1902 and construction of an aerial tramway (flying fox) across the river c. 1911.

Charters Towers was proclaimed a town in 1877, and by the early 1880s was a prosperous settlement with a rail link to the coast opened in 1882, yet still no sanitation system or reticulated water.

A report and estimate for a water supply scheme for Charters Towers was prepared in 1878 by the Resident Engineer for Northern Waterworks, John Baillie Henderson, but action was delayed until the very dry years 1883-85 during which time a public campaign run by Thadeus O'Kane, editor of The Northern Miner, placed pressure on the government to provide an adequate water supply at Charters Towers.

This campaign corresponded with a growing movement in industrialised countries for the establishment of water supply and sewerage infrastructures in urban communities.

[1] In 1884 the Queensland Water Supply Department (established in 1881 with JB Henderson as the government Hydraulic Engineer) revived and modified the 1878 scheme.

Water was to be pumped through a 12-inch (300 mm) cast-iron rising main to a circular reservoir on Tower Hill, from where it would be reticulated by gravity.

By early 1888 the Joint Board had placed an order with Hathorn Davey & Company of Leeds, England for a 75 horse power, inverted compound non-rotative engine coupled to a two-stage pumping system, with a capacity of 20,000 imperial gallons per hour (91 m3/h).

The engine was designed by Henry Davey who made a significant contribution to the development of steam powered water pumping systems during the late 19th century.

It took intervention by the colonial secretary, Sir Thomas McIlwraith, for Henderson to abandon opposition to Joyce's plans and in June the Queensland Government approved issue of a loan so that the work could proceed.

An inlet tunnel 172 feet (52 m) long to the river had been completed and was being lined with concrete and the pump shaft had been sunk to its full depth.

The frame for the machinery shed at the pumping station had been constructed by Benjamin Toll, the boilers had arrived from England, and the site for the reservoir on Tower Hill had been excavated.

Hathorn Davey thought it understood that Lancashire boilers were more suitable for the site because they had two flues which allowed for the burning of either coal or timber, but offered to pay for the construction of furnaces.

[1] By August 1889 the chimney was under construction and work was progressing well, when Talbot Joyce tendered his resignation following a dispute with Taylor and the contractor for the reservoir.

Joyce's resignation was accepted (illegally) by the Joint Board, Taylor was sacked and a new foreman (engineer William Bolland) appointed.

The wood supply for these engines was exhausted on the western bank, so a low level bridge across the river was erected and a tram track laid for a distance of 1?

[1] In the 1910s development at the pumping station included an aerial tramway (flying fox) constructed to replace the bridge across the Burdekin which was swept away in 1910/11; relocation in the creek bed of the rising main across Sheepstation Creek in 1913, eliminating on- going maintenance of the repeatedly flood-damaged trestle bridge; and in 1915-16 replacement of the Lancashire boilers with Cornish boilers purchased from the Brilliant and St George Mill and the Brilliant Central Mine.

By 1924 gold production at Charters Towers was on the decline, the population was falling, the demand for water had decreased and the pumps were able to meet the needs of the town.

It is about one kilometre south of the present city weir and pumping station, on a peninsula at the junction of the Burdekin River and Sheepstation Creek.

The pumping station, engineer's residence, worker's cottages and school were located on the north bank of the creek, which crosses the Water Supply Reserve from east to west.

This erosion stems from the late 1880s when an inlet tunnel was constructed and flooding on several occasions washed away the disturbed river bank.

The former Burdekin River Pumping Station demonstrates the substantial contribution of the late 19th century Charters Towers water supply system to the establishment of the surrounding gold fields at a critical period in the economic development of Queensland.

The pumping station remains an important illustration of late 19th century waterworks technology employed at a time when local authorities in Queensland were becoming aware of the benefits of a clean, plentiful water supply to their communities.

The pumping head from the Burdekin River to the service reservoir in Charters Towers of 570 feet (170 m) was the highest employed in Queensland up to that time.

The former Burdekin River Pumping Station has a close association with the work of engineers JB Henderson and FT Joyce and their contributions to the development of Queensland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.