Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme
The Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme was one of Australia’s largest engineering projects. Built between 1949 and 1974, it diverted water through dams, tunnels and power stations to generate electricity and support irrigation. Its multinational workforce also played an important role in post-war migration and the development of modern Australia.
Snowy Mountains Scheme Guthega Project
This video provided by Aage Stavdal, the author of 'A Boy From Sauda, Norway' captures the story of a construction company contracted from Norway to build the first stage of the Mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme in Guthega Australia
Jindabyne Story
Jindabyne is a new town created after the original settlement was drowned by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electricity Authority in the late 1960s.
(Image courtesy of Screen Australia)
Includes footage of Sister Passmore
The Snowy: a history
The Snowy: A History tells the story of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme through the experiences of the migrant workers, engineers, local residents and families whose lives it transformed. Drawing extensively on oral histories, Siobhán McHugh examines the scheme’s engineering achievements, dangerous working conditions and human cost, as well as its effects on the mountain communities and landscape. The book also explores the scheme’s important role in the emergence of multicultural Australia.
Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme
The Snowy Mountains Scheme was the biggest public works engineering scheme ever undertaken in Australia using over 100,000 people from more than 30 countries. It created the first truly diverse and multicultural workforce Australia had seen.
- Evidence of former Axis soldiers marching on Anzac Day 2:10
Snowy Hydro - Best of the Years
Documentary produced for the Snowy Mountains Scheme, digitised from a VHS tape that may have been an educational production or sold at a gift shop.
A story of the Snowy Scheme ... of people and their achievements 1949-1974
Produced by the Snowy Mountains Authority at Cooma NSW Australia
Sydney - Cooma Rail Tour
Map of the rail tour from Sydney to Cooma and the southern highlands - 1955
Dutch migration and the Snowy Mountains Scheme: work, community and nation building
The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme occupies a central place in Australia’s postwar history. Conceived as a nation-building project, it reshaped Australia’s energy and water systems while simultaneously transforming the country’s demographic profile. Between the late 1940s and the 1970s, the Scheme attracted tens of thousands of workers, the majority of whom were migrants from Europe.
Among them were Dutch migrants who arrived in Australia during the large postwar migration wave of the 1950s. Although never organised as a distinct national contingent, Dutch workers formed a visible and active part of the Snowy workforce and the communities that developed around it. Their involvement illustrates how Dutch migration combined labour, social life and long-term settlement in Australia.
Map of Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme
The Snowy Mountains in southern New South Wales form the highest section of the Great Dividing Range, which runs from Victoria to Queensland. They are the source of some of Australia’s greatest rivers: the Murray, Snowy, Murrumbidgee and Tumut.
In 1937, in a report to the NSW Government on the electrical development of the state, the British engineering consultancy Rendel, Palmer & Tritton recommended building a 250-megawatt hydro-electric project on the Snowy River. However, the outbreak of the Second World War meant the proposal was not acted on.
In 1941 the newly elected NSW Government began an inquiry into the power-generating potential of the Snowy Mountains rivers and in 1944 a scheme was proposed to use the area’s water for power and irrigation.
This led to the formation of the Commonwealth and States Snowy River Committee, which began negotiations over water usage between the states.
Mud Sweat and Snow: memories of Snowy Workers 1949-1959
Mud, Sweat and Snow records the experiences of workers during the first decade of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. Drawing on Noel Gough’s own service with the Snowy Mountains Authority and the recollections of fellow workers, it describes the demanding conditions, isolated settlements and multinational workforce that built the scheme between 1949 and 1959. Illustrated with photographs and maps, it also shows how the project contributed to the development of multicultural Australia.
Selling the Snowy: The Snowy Mountains Scheme and National Mythmaking
Author explores the role of national mythmaking behind the Snowy Mountains Scheme as an icon of technological, economic progress and multiculturalism in Australia.
Snowy Waters
Australia’s greatest engineering undertaking, the Snowy River Hydroelectric Scheme, in the Southern Alps, is changing the geography of an area as big as Switzerland by completely altering the course of streams and rivers, and is intended to bring into agricultural production double the area now served by irrigation, and to provide double Australia’s present output of electrical power.
Snowy Mountains Scheme 1956-1958 Place Family Experience
Snowy Mountains Scheme video looks at an Australian family's experiences in living in Kenny's Knob a remote construction camp providing labour for the Tumut 1 tunnel and power station. Aubrey Place was the accountant for the French Consortium Etudes et Enterprises and his wife Nancy Place was the Post Mistress for the camp of 950 migrant men and 50 women and children.
Snowy: the making of modern Australia
Snowy: The Making of Modern Australia recounts the construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme through archival research and interviews with those involved. Brad Collis examines both its engineering achievements and the experiences of the tens of thousands of workers drawn from more than thirty countries. The book presents the scheme as a nation-building project that helped transform post-war Australia into a modern industrial and multicultural society.
Fate of Jindabyne and Adaminaby
The article reports on discussions between Snowy River Shire Council representatives and William Hudson, Commissioner of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority, concerning the proposed flooding of Jindabyne and Adaminaby as part of the Snowy Mountains Scheme. Hudson assured councillors that affected residents would be consulted before decisions were made about their relocation and the establishment of new townships, and that they would receive fair treatment. He explained that the Authority's immediate priorities were establishing accommodation for workers, developing electricity generation and commencing tunnel construction, with detailed planning for the relocation of the towns to follow.
Jindabyne Will Die With a Fat Purse
The article describes the transformation of Jindabyne during the early construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme and the town's impending destruction beneath a new reservoir. The arrival of thousands of workers, including European migrants, brought unprecedented prosperity to local businesses, despite uncertainty about the town's future. It recounts Jindabyne's early history, changing social life, housing and supply difficulties, and plans for a replacement township. Residents were concerned about compensation, relocation and preserving the town's identity. The article captures the contrast between the economic opportunities created by the Snowy Scheme and the loss of a long-established rural community.
New Jindabyne
A 1952 newspaper article reports that construction of New Jindabyne had already begun, three or four miles from the original township, which was destined to be submerged by the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
Of the 16 houses planned for Commission staff, 10 had already been erected. Streets had been planned and named, and the houses were equipped with electricity, running water and sewerage.
Irrigation and Power from Snowy Mountains
In this letter to the Border Morning Mail, Commissioner Hudson explains the relationship between hydro-electric power generation and irrigation in the Snowy Mountains Scheme. He argues that the scheme was designed primarily to meet peak electricity demand, complementing coal-fired power stations supplying base-load power. He rejects suggestions that electricity generation would be governed by irrigation requirements, explaining that water discharged from the power stations would be stored in reservoirs for subsequent release as required by irrigators. The scheme was therefore intended to serve both electricity generation and irrigation without compromising either purpose.