Of Australia

Travel Talk

Big Events On The Roof Of Australia

While most Australians have a vague idea that something died the Snowy Mountains Scheme is afoot in the highest land ass of their continent, few of them realise the immensity of e work being done. Few visitors know anything of the project though it is the biggest current engineering undertaking in the orld. It has fascinated even non-engineering types who have me up to see it and the country, of course, is quite unlike what e think of as “typical Australia”.

)RE and more people are nowa days taking advantage of the organised Snowy Mountains run by Ansett-Pioneer, with the ing and full co-operation of the ry Mountains Authority, the monwealth statutory body set up ie middle of 1949 to handle the million hydro-electric project. ;ually, these tours commence at na, headquarters of the SMA, connection by coach may be j from any Australian capital For a four-day tour from na the cost is £A2O/10/- per 3n, inclusive

iccommodation all meals, jurists travel 3-seater diesel lies, accom ed by a guide i the SMA

. The tour begins with a visit the Authority’s information re, in North Cooma, where the lucting officer gives an overall ription of the scheme, aided by excellent colour film, tie Snowy scheme, basically, is to water from the eastern side of Great Dividing Range (where it s unproductively to the sea) and, itoring and diverting it under the ntains, make it produce electric er, then send it down the Murray Murrumbidgee Rivers to the dry

western plains where it is used for irrigation—and to a developing Aus tralia the second part of the pro gramme is even more important than the first.

The scheme falls into two sections.

Firstly, the Snowy-Tumut Develop ment, involving the diversion of the Eucumbene (tributary of the Snowy), the Upper Murrumbidgee and the Tooma (tributary of the Murray), to the Upper Tumut (a Murrumbidgee tributary) and the construction of a series of power stations on the Tumut River. Most of this phase of

The

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the work has been completed.

Secondly, there is the Snowy- Murray Develop ment, involving the diversion of

the Snowy to the Murray by a series of tunnels and the construction of two large power stations to utilise the 2,600 ft fall between the rivers. Subsidiary pro jects of this part of the scheme will generate power from Windy Creek and the Geehi River. A 15-miles tunnel connection between the Snowy and Lake Eucumbene is a “two-way flow”, horseshoe-shaped tunnel de signed to allow storage of the surplus flood waters of the Snowy.

Before setting out for the snow

country, an inspection is made by the tourists of the Authority’s engineer ing laboratories at Cooma, so that visitors may have a better apprecia tion of the problems involved in the gigantic undertaking. (At the labora tory, incidentally, other water pro jects on which the Authority’s scien tists and engineers are assisting in design can be seen in model form.

One is the Laloki River-Rouna Falls hydro-electric scheme, near Port Moresby, Papua.) Highlights of the tour include a visit to the underground Tumut 2 Power Station; a call at Adaminaby, the township that was completely moved by trailers to anew site six miles away, before its valley was flooded; a launch cruise across Lake Eucumbene and an inspection of Eu cumbene Dam, one of the highest earth-and-rock-fill dams in the world; and, if travelling between late May and September, some of the most breath-taking snow scenery of the Australian Alps and the ski resorts.

Accommodation is in comfortable double and single rooms at the SMA township-camps at Cabramurra (4,880 ft, and now the highest town in Australia) and at Island Bend (on the Snowy), during the first and second nights, with dinner and break fast at the SMA staff messes. Meals are well-cooked, wholesome food,

"Pacific Islands Monthly" is a member of the Australian National Travel Association A) and the Pacific Area Travel Association (PATA), which are pledged to promote tourist travel in their areas.

without any fancy frills, served cafe teria-style.

The third night is spent at a modern motel at Khancoban, not far from the Victorian border, with meals at the motel’s up-to-date res taurant.

Each evening, documentary colour films of some aspect of the Snowy Scheme are shown for the tourists’ entertainment.

While warm clothing is essential during the winter months, it is not unpleasant travelling—the coaches are heated and both the barrack-type SMA accommodation blocks and Khancoban motel have individual room-heating.

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Africa is Still Worthwhile—Part II Since BOAC and South African Airways changed from Super Con stellation aircraft to jets, Livingstone has been off the main Johannesburg- London route (which now goes through Salisbury in Southern Rho desia and on to Nairobi, in Kenya), but the deviation is easy by local air lines and well worthwhile.

The deviation can either be from Johannesburg to Livingstone and on to Nairobi to pick up the jet lines; or from Salisbury as a side trip.

Central African Airways and East African Airways operate the connect

ing services, using mostly Viscount planes.

There is only one reason for going to Livingstone—Victoria Falls, a dozen miles away. Livingstone itself is a small country town which would be equally at home in the American West, or the Australian outback, and has a population of about 2,000 Europeans. It was the capital of Northern Rhodesia until 1935.

Victoria Falls, although it has been a tourist sight for half a century, still manages not to be hackneyed.

It is a visitor’s “must” on the con tinent of Africa and a special must for anyone who has previously seen Niagara Falls—just to note different treatment given these two natural phenomena.

While Niagara is full of the emis sions from the local chemical fac tories, illuminated by coloured lights and stiff with people and whale-sized automobiles, Victoria Falls happens out in the wide, brown veldt without any assistance from man, and has been little spoiled since the missionary-explorer David Living stone became the first white man to gaze upon it in 1855. Like Niagara, it now generates a vast amount of electricity but is unobtrusive about it.

The Falls—part of the Zambezi River—do not fall from a height onto a plain; but from a plain (or a tableland) into a huge gash in the earth. The falls are about three miles wide and an average 300 feet deep.

After falling into the gash, the river then enters a gorge and runs in twists and turns in a canyon 400 ft deep for the next 40 miles (and finally reaches the sea over 700 miles away in Portuguese East Africa). From the

surrounding country the Falls are not visible from afar. You have to be right on them—or over them in a plane—before you see them.

The Zambezi, which is a huge river even above the Falls, is the boundary between Southern and Northern Rhodesia and you can walk from one to the other over the all-purpose bridge built for the railway.

Tourist accommodation is clus tered around the Falls area and not in the town of Livingstone and the best of it is the Victoria Falls Hotel, owned by the Government Railways and first class in any company. In its time it has entertained some of the world’s most famous tourists.

Apart from the usual amenities it has a fresh-water swimming pool and a magnificient shady terrace where you can sit and drink and gaze over the brown countryside and what ap pears to be smoke a quarter of a mile away. To most Australians it looks like a bush-fire in the making; it is, in fact, the spray from the Falls as they tumble into the chasm, (The native name for the Falls means “the smoke that thunders”.) Most visitors can fill in a couple of days (skirting the notices that say “Do not try to make friends with the baboons”) examining the Falls in all their aspects.

In full sunlight, at sunset, by moonlight they come in different moods, all fascinating or you can borrow raincoats and wander in the tropical rain-forest that the spray has produced; or be lucky enough to see the lunar rainbows that a full moon can produce.

As variations from the Falls, visi tors can make launch excursions up the Zambezi to river islands fre quented by elephants; visit the 20-feet high statue of Livingstone, who in his Foreign Legion cap, stands, points and stares along the face of the Falls he discovered over a century ago.

The Falls are just north of Wankie Game Reserve which can be visited either by land vehicle or flown over in small charter aircraft.

Part 111 to follow)