Published Resources Details

Conference Paper

Author
Gilbert, H. deV.
Title
The Great Lake (Waddamana 'A') Power Development in Tasmania 1910-1965: Origins and Working History
In
9th National Conference on Engineering Heritage: Proceedings
Imprint
Institution of Engineers, Australia, Melbourne, Victoria, 1998, pp. 151-159
ISBN/ISSN
1858256843
Url
https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.546877113641335
Abstract

The Great Lake (Waddamana 'A') Power development was originated in 1910 by a private company to supply power for a new electrolytic smelting process in Hobart. Unusually severe weather conditions in 1912 and refinancing problems forced the company into receivership in 1914. The Government took over construction to create the first complete public hydro electric supply system in Australia, opening in 1916. Remoteness of the area required transport of equipment by rail, road using steam traction engines, and a purpose built wooden railed horse drawn tramway. The Chief Engineer for both the company and the government construction (and later expansion and administration) was J.H. Butters. After opening in 1916 the scheme was expanded by 1922 with a higher dam, 7 higher capacity machines and 5 transmission lines. The plant remained in continuous and heavily loaded service till shut down in 1965. Over this period additions were made to the scheme, including a second canal, a second station a large switch yard and a further storage dam. This paper is not strictly a research paper but more a summary of the information gathered while operating, maintaining and administering the development and subsequently due to the interest generated by that experience. For details of the civil works and biographical notes of the engineers involved see Ref. 6. The Imperial units used in the design and construction and during the working life have been retained for this paper.

People

Related Published resources

isPartOf

EOAS ID: bib/ASBS05984.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 February (Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#kooyang
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/bib/ASBS05984.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260