Australia has a reasonably long history of using desalination techniques.

This includes the wood-fired stills of the Coolgardie goldfields over 100 years ago, to distillation in the North West, solar ponds at Coober Pedy and electrodialysis for the first plant at Yulara.

There are about 240 desalination plants in Australia, most of them small scale plants to desalinate seawater or brackish water.

Desalination was generally used in Australia to provide drinking water for arid, remote communities that were important because of mining, defence, communications, transport or tourism activities.

Examples are plants for residents and visitors to Hamilton Island, Kangaroo Island, Torres Strait Islands and Rottnest Island.

Sporting facilities such as bowling and golf clubs are desalinating water to irrigate greens and courses. Some agricultural and horticultural industries, such as dairy farms and plant nurseries, are also using their own desalination plants.

Ongoing dry conditions have seen major desalination plants planned or constructed in most Australian capital cities to produce large amounts of drinking water for urban populations.  

Australia’s first major seawater desalination plant was commissioned in Perth in 2006. Since then, plants have been constructed on the Gold Coast and in Sydney. One is being constructed in Adelaide and a second is in development for Perth.  

Victoria’s project will be Australia’s largest desalination plant with the capacity to produce up to 150 billion litres of drinking water per year.

• To see video footage of the Perth and Gold Coast plants click here.