Australian
Screen

an NFSA website


A Town To Be Drowned (1958)

Synopsis

This is one of the earliest documentaries made by ABC television. It records the disappearance of the old town of Adaminaby beneath the waters of the Snowy as part of the construction of the Adaminaby Dam for the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme.

Through the eyes of the pioneers we see Adaminaby as it was and hear about a way of life that no longer exists. A new Adaminaby is being built to house the residents while the program documents the emotional moment when the water actually begins to seep into the valley, drowning the old town.

Curator’s notes

by Janet Bell

This is an extraordinary documentary about an era that has now passed into history. The older residents interviewed are from the pioneering days of farmers and stockmen and their families, the world of the real 'man from Snowy River’, while the new Adaminaby reflects the massive changes in population and prosperity that have occurred in Australia since the Second World War.

The documentary is filmed in black-and-white with camerawork by Doug Hardy. The director-producer is Robert Raymond, who recalled in his book Out of the Box (1999) (his third volume of memoirs), 'It was, however, one of the first homemade documentaries on a contemporary local subject to be seen on Australian television’. Long thought to have been lost, the documentary was uncovered in 1993 in the Snowy Mountains Authority library and restored. The historian Peter Reid, who found the print, wrote of A Town To Be Drowned, 'Both the pointed commentary and haunting images announce that the destruction of the old town was an inescapable, yet poetic, tragedy for those involved’.

Raymond was one of the founders of Four Corners (1961-current) with Michael Charlton. His memoirs were published as From Bees to Buzz Bombs: Robert Raymond’s Boyhood-to-Blitz Memoirs (1992), Giving Luck A Chance (1993) and Out of the Box: Further Memoirs of Robert Raymond (1999). Robert Raymond died in 2003.

The Snowy Hydro Collection (1949-74) on this website contains many selections from the extensive filmed record of the construction of the Snowy Hydro Scheme.