32. Cocoroc a Ghost Town Inside a Sewage Treatment Plant_TMBTP

This is the first ever episode of “This Must Be the Place”: a documentary style visit to the remains of Cocoroc, inside the Western Treatment Plant. If you live in Melbourne, chances are you don’t give too much thought to where what you flush down the toilet goes to. The important part is it just goes ‘away’. But the chances are – as with 80% of Melbourne’s sewage - it travels to the Western Treatment Plant in Werribee. For much of its history, from the 1890s, the Plant was known as the ‘Metropolitan Farm’. It was the most productive farm in Victoria. And the farm was, for nearly a century, a home to many people. As recently as the late 1970s, hundreds of workers and their families lived inside the sewage farm, including in a township called Cocoroc. In this episode Elizabeth and David take a tour with Melbourne Water Heritage Manager Paul Balescone to see what remains of Cocoroc today. They also speak to a PhD student, Monika Schott, who's researching what life was like living on the Farm. And they introduce the idea of the This Must Be The Place podcast. Alternative title: “dropping the kids off at the pool”. (The town’s old swimming pool is featured. Also that’s a terrible joke). Corrections from the audio: The town of Cocoroc was occupied until the 1970s, not the 1980s. And although there were many place-names within the Farm some say there was only really one town, Cocoroc.