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Clip description
Essential safety procedures for plant workers on the Snowy Mountains Scheme are detailed, and procedures for travelling to and from worksites are laid out.
Curator’s notes
The Snowy Mountains Scheme commenced in 1949 but it wasn’t until 1961 that the Snowy Mountains Joint Safety and Rehabilitation Council was set up, and safety was prioritised. As the century progressed, advances in technology – not just in engineering but in the production of fibres, fabrics and plastics for clothing, footwear, harnesses and other equipment – facilitated the introduction and implementation of safety measures. The initiatives of the scheme reflected the development of safety standards nationwide at the same time. In some instances, for example the compulsory wearing of seatbelts in motor vehicles, the Snowy Scheme led the way.
What’s interesting about this clip, shot in the late 1960s, is the comparison between it and similar footage shot on the scheme some 15 years earlier. The evolution of safety standards is patent. Protective clothing and footwear are now the order of the day, and where men were once transported to and from worksites bouncing around in the back of trucks, they now travel in a 'Man Haul’. Even their camp, a three-storey pre-fabricated unit block, looks very different from the early workers’ camps.
