Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This clip shows workers from the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme singing 'The Snowy Mountains song’ about life on the Scheme. It opens with a long shot of a construction camp in the evening and cuts to a staged scene in a crowded recreational hut where the workers, all men, led by a man with a guitar, sing the song. The men are also shown drinking beer, playing cards, darts and draughts. As the song fades, the clip cuts to a sequence that shows men in safety helmets and overalls entering a tunnel under excavation. This sequence is accompanied by orchestral music and the title of the film, Where Men and Mountains Meet, appears on the screen.

Educational value points

• This film promotes the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme, a major post-Second World War construction project. Built between 1949 and 1974, the Scheme was the largest single engineering project undertaken in Australia and required a massive workforce. It consists of 16 large dams, 7 power stations, a pumping station, 145 km of tunnels and 80 km of aqueducts that diverted water from the Snowy Mountains for use in power generation and irrigation.

• The Scheme employed men of different nationalities, as suggested in this clip. A labour force of more than 100,000, representing 32 nationalities, worked on the Scheme over a 35-year period. Seventy per cent of these workers were either migrants or temporary residents from the USA or northern Europe.

• The excerpt portrays friendship between workers as a positive feature of work on the Scheme. While the camaraderie may have been emphasised for the film, the Scheme’s multicultural labour force was celebrated for the harmonious way it worked together. This was despite the fact that many European workers found themselves working and living alongside former Second World War enemies. The isolation of the camps meant that workers and their families (though no women are depicted here) often joined together to make their own entertainment.

• The Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority (SMA) and the Department of Education ran free English classes in all of the Scheme’s camps and townships, as is indicated by the poster advertising free English lessons. Classes were offered in the first 6 months of employment and were aimed at integrating migrants, but also as a safety measure, so that all workers could understand warning signs and effectively communicate on site. Employment contracts for non-English speaking workers included a clause stating that workers who did not attain a satisfactory standard of English in this period could be dismissed.

• Conditions in the Scheme’s temporary camps, one of which is seen in the clip, were hard and the amenities basic. A hundred camps were established throughout the Snowy Mountains during construction of the Scheme, and accommodation consisted of either canvas tents or prefabricated huts. Although the huts shown here have electricity, Scheme huts often had no floor coverings, little heating, and no running hot water. The camps had a recreational hut such as that depicted in this clip. While the song says that these places were unsuitable for women, many wives and children lived at the camps.

• Tunnellers had the most dangerous job on the Scheme, working hundreds of metres below ground in cold, damp and cramped conditions. Hazards included rock falls and premature explosions. Excavation began simultaneously from both ends of the tunnel and proceeded incrementally. Workers drilled holes in the rock at regular intervals and the holes were then packed with explosives that, when detonated, caused the rock to fracture. Carts on rail tracks carried men into the tunnel and brought out rock spoil.

• The excerpt is taken from a film that attempts to recruit workers by depicting the work as a 'man’s job’. Lyrics that extol the 'man among men’ who takes off his 'white collar’ and 'puts down his pen’ to 'blow down a mountain’, and that emphasise the tough working conditions, infer that Scheme workers needed to be rugged and physical. This is reinforced by the heroic music that accompanies the footage of workers entering the tunnel and appealed to the Australian concept of rugged mateship.

• While the sequence in the recreational hut features workers from the Scheme, it has been staged for the documentary and the song has been dubbed (added) onto the soundtrack after filming. At the time the film was made, it was difficult to record sound and image simultaneously on location, as the film camera and audiotape recorder had to be linked by an unwieldy cable. Dialogue and other sounds were recorded later and dubbed onto the soundtrack during post production. After 1967 it became possible to record synchronised sound without the cable link.