IELTS Reading Table Completion Example 8

The Dams That Changed Australia

A. Inland Australia has had a problem with drought from the time of white settlement in 1788 until today, and this is why the Snowy Mountains Scheme was conceived and founded. Before the Snowy Scheme a large proportion of the snowfields on Australia’s highest mountains (the Snowy Mountains) melted into the Snowy River every year. Hence, Snowy River water flowed, ultimately, into the sea, not toward the dry interior of the country, where people needed it so desperately. This was first recognised by the Polish geologist and explorer Strezlecki in 1840, who commented that there could be no development of the inland without adequate water supply. The rivers would have to be diverted if irrigation were to succeed. Before Federation in 1901, Australia consisted of a group of colonies, all anxious to protect their own interests. After Federation the states retained rights to the water, and thus to what might happen to the rivers. Arguments between New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia led to a deadlocked Premiers’ Conference in 1947. Despite this serious dispute, the Federal Parliament passed the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Power Act just two years later, on July 7. The project was officially commenced on October 17 that year, barely three months after the act had been passed. The scheme set out to harness water for electricity and to divert it back to the dry inland areas for irrigation. To do this, thousands of kilometres of tunnels had to be drilled through the mountains, and sixteen major dams and seven hydro-electric power stations built over a period of nineteen years. The first of these was Guthega Power Station, which was commissioned in 1954. and the last one to be finished was Tumut III.

B. The Snowy Mountains Scheme was to alter the face of Australia forever. One important change was the recruitment of people from outside Australia to work on the scheme. In 1949, while the world was still recovering from the effects of World War II (1939 to 1945), the Australian government needed immense numbers of people to work on the Snowy. It sought labour from overseas, and 60,000 of the 100,000 people who worked on the scheme came from outside the country. They came from thirty different countries: from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Germany, from sophisticated cities like Budapest, Paris and Vienna, and from tiny hamlets. These European workers left countries which had fought against each other during the war, and which had vastly different cultures, and they found themselves in a country which was still defining itself. They were adventurous young men, some highly skilled, some not, and they came to a place which offered both enormous challenges and primitive conditions. Many were housed in tents in the early days of the scheme, although some fortunate men were placed in barracks. The food was basic, female company extremely scarce and entertainment lacking.

 could not be developed without irrigation

 Premiers’ Conference

 people from abroad

1. Inland
2. Deadlocked
3. 1949
4. 60,000