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Snowy Hydro – Conquest of the Rivers (1957)

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A new multicultural home education content clip 1

Original classification rating: not rated. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

In this 1957 clip, TE Carpenter (Pat Tingwell – younger brother of Bud), the boring contractor from Boorandarra, has taken a job on the Snowy Mountains Scheme and has been settled in the new township of Cabramurra. He and his wife watch as their young son begins to socialise with the other Snowy Scheme children who come from all over Europe and, unlike the young Aussie, are very snow-literate.

It’s a charming little sequence, and it’s curious to note the extravagant and emotive language of the voice-over – in this case, doing the work of sync dialogue. This lack of sync dialogue highlights how recent it was that sync sound became commonplace in documentary production. Apart from the fact that the new motorised 16mm cameras were very noisy, crystal sync wasn’t introduced until 1967 and cable sync, which had been developed in the 1940s, was unwieldy and difficult on location.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows cabins being transported by truck through snow-covered countryside to Cabramurra, New South Wales, a newly established township for workers on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme. The dramatised documentary then shows actors playing an Australian family that has recently arrived in the town. The parents watch their son play in the snow with a group of children who have migrated from various parts of the world. The father then goes off to work in a four-wheel drive. The father’s scripted voice-over is heard in place of dialogue. He enthuses about both the Scheme and the multicultural nature of its workforce. A jaunty soundtrack accompanies the clip.

Educational value points

  • The film promotes the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme, a major post-Second World War construction project that diverted water from the Snowy Mountains for use in power generation and irrigation. Built between 1949 and 1974, the Scheme was a huge engineering feat, and at the time it was built, was the largest single engineering project undertaken in Australia. The scheme consists of 16 large dams, 7 power stations, a pumping station, 145 km of tunnels and 80 km of aqueducts. It cost $820 million.
  • The clip is part of a campaign undertaken by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority (SMA) to recruit Australians to the massive workforce needed for the Scheme. The SMA employed filmmakers not only to document the construction of the Scheme, but also to produce films that were used for recruitment or public relations.
  • A post-Second World War skills shortage forced the SMA to recruit large numbers of workers from overseas, as is indicated by the clip’s depiction of the workforce as multicultural. 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. This multicultural labour force is celebrated for the harmony with which it worked.
  • Towns such as Eaglehawk and Cabramurra, the new town shown in the clip, as well as smaller, temporary mountain settlements were established to house the Scheme’s workers and their families. Workers often moved from one construction township to another as various projects were finished and others commenced. Conditions in these isolated towns were often basic, with houses lacking amenities such as curtains, floor coverings or insulation.
  • Cabramurra was built to house workers involved in the construction of the Tumut 1 and Tumut 2 Power Station projects during the 1950s and 1960s. Today the town, which was modernised and rebuilt in the 1970s, has a population of about 150. It provides accommodation for operators and maintenance staff employed at the two power stations, as well as people involved in essential services. At 1,488 m, it is the highest permanent town in Australia.
  • Many children of Scheme workers grew up in construction towns like Cabramurra. Australian children were often a minority, as the narrator indicates when he says 'we were to be strangers in the country of our birth’. The climate, social and cultural mix and the mobility of many families made the Snowy a unique place for children to grow up in.
  • Skiing and other snow sports were popular pastimes for both adults and children in winter in towns like Cabramurra. Many European children were already experienced skiers, and other children learnt to ski both for fun and out of necessity in order to traverse the snow-covered townships. Cabramurra hosted many skiing events, and the passion of European workers for snow sports aided the development of the skiing industry in the Snowy Mountains.
  • The scripted voice-over may have been used in place of dialogue because in 1957 it was difficult to record sound and image simultaneously on location. Sound and image must be recorded at the same time to be synchronised, and in the 1950s, the film camera and audiotape recorder had to be linked by a cable. In 1967 crystal sync eliminated the need for a cable by using a crystal oscillator (electronic circuit) in both camera and recorder to synchronise the operating speeds of the equipment.