Located in Cooma New South Wales, the Snowy Hydro Discovery Centre is an excellent place to learn about the Snowy Mountains Scheme, one of Australia’s greatest engineering projects. The centre’s exhibits trace the history of the scheme and people who built it.
The Snowy Mountains Scheme
Commencing in 1949, the Snowy Mountains Scheme consists of sixteen major dams; nine power stations; two pumping stations; and 225 kilometres (140 miles) of tunnels, pipelines and aqueducts. During its 24 years of construction, over 100,000 people from over 30 countries worked on the project. This provided employment for many recently arrived immigrants, and was important in Australia’s post-war economic and social development. Seventy percent of all the workers were migrants. Unfortunately 121 workers were killed during construction. A memorial with their names sits outside the centre next to a monument to Sir William Hudson, the Commissioner of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
The scheme generates 5.5 Megawatts of electricity for New South Wales and Victoria.
Snowy Hydro Discovery Centre
Cooma is 115km south of Canberra, a one and a quarter hours drive on the Monaro Highway. The Discovery Centre is one of the first buildings you will see when entering the town on the Monaro Highway and is a great place to stop, learn about the Snowy Mountains Scheme and have a coffee after you drive. To start your visit, a small theatre plays a short video that explains the history of the area and the people who built it. Once the video finishes, you can wander around the rest of the centre at your leisure.
A scale model of the Snowy Mountains provides an idea of the sale of the project by showing the dams built, tunnels constructed and the location of the power stations. This was a huge project undertaken just after the end of World War Two and was seen as a nation building project, supplying power to Australia’s two most populous states. Additionally, around 70,000 immigrants from post-war Europe were employed on the project over its construction period. Their contribution to the project and the enrichment of Australian society is a major theme of the Centre.
A café on site provides light refreshments and coffee.
Our photos are available for purchase on
To see what else there is to do in New South Wales, please see some of our other stories.
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