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Clip description
The clip summarises the range of work which the labour recruits to the early stages of the Snowy Mountains Scheme were called on to perform.
Curator’s notes
Shot in 1954, this clip provides a vivid picture of the numbers of migrant men employed on the Snowy Mountains Scheme. The sequence shows a range of operations and work activities in which they were involved in the early phases of the project. The jobs of clearing roads and establishing settlements in remote areas – where workers had to actually construct the dwellings in which they, or the next wave of intakes, would then live – must have presented a challenge for the new arrivals, many of whom were from urban backgrounds. Between 1947 and 1974 (a period which roughly corresponds to the duration of the scheme), 2.5 million people migrated to Australia. The images of men at work in this clip very much prefigure what was to become a typical Australian workplace.
