History
The Watson Drilling foundation stones were laid in the 1930’s when W L Watson and his father were employed as exploration drillers on the deep leads of Victoria in pursuit of alluvial gold. This enterprise was rudely interrupted by two major world events - WWII and the massive decline of gold prices.
Post war W L Watson’s attention shifted to the vast amount of water contained in those same buried ancestral riverbeds and as a private drilling contractor drilled many countless bores for stock and domestic purposes. From these beginnings Watson Drilling under the direction of John Watson (son of W L Watson) grew into central Victoria’s leading alluvial drilling contractors. In late 1980 Watson Drilling focused its attention to the little explored deep ground water basins of Southern New South Wales and established a permanent base in Deniliquin in 1988.
The company has continued to grow and modernize its fleet with heavy-duty rigs being purchased to undertake the greater depths and larger diameter holes required. The 1990’s saw the addition of electric and gamma logging equipment being purchased to help identify questionable aquifers.
Further improvements continued with full test pumping equipment being added to our fleet, enabling pump testing from ½ litre per second up to 300 litres per second out of the various size pumping units now employed. In 1998 the company grew again establishing a permanent base in Hillston, New South Wales, to cater for the large ground water development that was taking place in the Lachlan Valley. Over the years Watson Drilling have pioneered many techniques of drilling and constructing practices that have become industry standard today.
Watson Drilling possess a fleet of drilling rigs of various configurations giving the flexibility to tackle drilling tasks of all dimensions from 50mm to 500mm plus. The Watson Drilling team of today is as innovation as their fore bearers with thousands of completed successful projects and a wealth of knowledge behind them coupled with third and fourth generation drillers from the Watson family leading the way.