Tim The Yowie Man steps back in time through the Snowy Hydro Adit Portal

Tim The Yowie Man sits down with Owen Davis, who worked at the Snowy Hydro adit portal near Guthega during the early 1960s.

Transcript

00:00Owen Davis is one of the thousands of workers who toiled away on the Snowy Hydro Scheme.

00:06In the early 1960s he worked here at the Snowy Addit Portal, a tunnel on the banks of the Snowy

00:12River just downstream from Guthiga. I recently caught up with Owen under this tree, under which

00:19he used to drive locomotives laden with goods and people into the tunnel entrance.

00:25I started here as a labourer after doing some diamond drilling and I graduated from labourer

00:37to a loco driver. I still have my loco driver's ticket actually, restricted to the Snowy Mountains

00:43for driving a train and then got a stiff-legged crane operator's ticket, then a form carrier,

00:50then worked on the face but I realised that it was pretty dangerous there so I got

00:54out of that after a couple of months and worked on a gunite rig and then transferred out from

00:59underground up to Barunga Buggy on the shaft. It was a hive of activity, you know there were

01:06trains coming in and out, there was face material coming in and out and going up to the crusher,

01:11there was concrete coming in and out, there were formwork going in and out so it was all go,

01:17you know 12 hours a day virtually. It's an interesting question, was it unsafe? No,

01:22most people were pretty aware of safety or you know didn't want to put themselves in danger that's

01:27for sure. There were accidents, there was, you know, even before they started they estimated

01:32one a mile, one death a mile and that's what they virtually achieved and I don't mean they

01:37aimed to achieve that, that's virtually what happened, you know, so they knew from experience

01:42what was likely to happen. Did you see anyone injured, you know, in the tunnel?

01:48I saw a hand crush, that's all, that was the worst thing I saw. I know there were worse accidents,

01:52certainly up at Island Bend behind the dam where they were putting shafts in, there was

01:56a case of concrete, a large amount of concrete falling down on the workers below and guys,

02:02you know, who died virtually locked in concrete before the doctor could get them out.

02:07Right, so buried alive in concrete, yeah. Because of the shift work, there was, you know,

02:12if you went to the wet mess it was okay, there was a sense of camaraderie, there was a

02:16movie house there too, you could go to the movies, but it wasn't a tight camaraderie,

02:25there was more, you know, there would be the Italian groups, the Australian groups, the German

02:30groups, the Austrian groups, they all had their own groups going. It was more get some sleep and

02:35get back to work. So no days off? Maybe about once a fortnight we had a Sunday off. And what did

02:41you do on that Sunday? Fish. Fish? In the river behind us? In the river. Was it good fishing?

02:48Did you catch a fair few trout? Yeah, it was fabulous fishing, yeah, it really was, and beautiful fish too.