To guarantee the water supply in one of the largest Australian cities, Melbourne, a 70-kilometer-long pipeline was planned to be installed. It would connect the Goulburn River in the north of the state Victoria and the Sugarloaf Reservoir in the city’s northeast. The pipeline was planned with a capacity of 75 billion liters of water per year.

A Herrenknecht micromachine type AVN1800TB was used along the 830-meter-long underground section near the Toolangi State Forest. The micromachine, with an extended outer diameter of 2.4 meters, had to bore its way through formations with rock strengths of up to 250MPa. After only ten weeks of operation, the TBM reached its target on June 19, 2009, completing one of the longest hardrock pipe jacking sections ever driven in Australia. The breakthrough marked a milestone in the overall project allowing to provide the inhabitants of Melbourne with the precious water as scheduled from mid-2010.