Video: Australia’s Snowy Mountain Hydro

It turns out there must be a number of keen aussie’s who watch this Mega Projects channel on youtube. Due to overwhelming demand in the comments they made a video on the famous Australian Snowy Mountain Hydro scheme.

Any keen Australian skier or snowboarder knows about the New South Wales Snowy Mountains, but did you know there is more to them than the incredible resorts of Thredbo, Perisher and Charlotte Pass? A large number of post war immigrants to Australia worked on this project and many people living in Melbourne or Sydney and everywhere in between likely have relatives who were involved.

If you are looking to nerd out a little about the largest engineering project Australia has ever completed then watch below.

The Snowy Mountains scheme or Snowy scheme is a hydroelectricity and irrigation complex in south-east Australia. The Scheme consists of sixteen major dams; nine power stations; two pumping stations; and 225 kilometres (140 mi) of tunnels, pipelines and aqueducts that were constructed between 1949 and 1974. The Scheme was completed under the supervision of Chief Engineer, Sir William Hudson. It is the largest engineering project undertaken in Australia.

The water of the Snowy River and some of its tributaries, much of which formerly flowed southeast onto the river flats of East Gippsland, and into Bass Strait of the Tasman sea, is captured at high elevations and diverted inland to the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers irrigation areas. The Scheme includes two major tunnel systems constructed through the continental divide of the Snowy Mountains, known in Australia as the Great Dividing Range. The waterfalls 800 metres (2,600 ft) and travels through large hydro-electric power stations which generate peak-load power for the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Victoria.[2][4] The Scheme also provides some security of water flows to the Murray-Darling basin, providing approximately 2,100 gigalitres (7.4×1010 cu ft) of water a year to the basin for use in Australia's irrigated agriculture industry.

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