Psyche Bend Pump Station was built in 1891 by the Chaffey brothers, after Psyche Bend, in Mildura, Vic, was identified as a good location to install a pump station to meet the needs of a new irrigation settlement. 

The Chaffey brothers arrived in Melbourne, Vic, five years earlier in 1886 after they had already had success with irrigation colonies in California, USA, at which point they had met and been informed by Deakin (a cabinet minister in the Victorian government at the time who had been sent to the US on a fact-finding mission) that their successful US irrigation developments could be replicated in Victoria (and later Renmark, South Australia). They visited Australia to look at irrigation projects, and following this, George Chaffey selected Mildura as the site for an irrigation development because of its large tracts of Crown land, climate, soil types, and proximity to two major rivers, the Murray and the Darling.

The need to raise water from the Murray to land that was approximately 28 m