Old Adaminaby and Lake Eucumbene are the heritage-listed former town of Adaminaby and the reservoir that flooded the town, now at Eucumbene, Snowy Valleys Council, New South Wales, Australia. The town was established in 1830. The reservoir was designed by the Snowy Hydro Electric Authority and built from 1956 to 1958 by the Authority. It is also known as Old Adaminaby and Lake Eucumbene, including relics and movable objects, Eucumbene River, Eucumbene Valley, Old Adaminaby Remains, Old Adaminaby Ruins and Old Adaminaby Drowned Landscape. The property is owned by Snowy Hydro Limited, a statutory corporation owned by the governments of Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. The site was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 3 June 2008.
History Indigenous history The Ngarigo people occupied the country from Canberra south to just below the NSW/Victorian border, west to Tumbarumba and east to the coast. This group name is that of the plains turkey or Australian bustard, Ardeotis australis, which was common on the Monaro grasslands before the arrival of Europeans. The Ngarigo tribe is made up of a number of individual clans, each of which has rights and responsibilities to a particular part of the country. They are generally named after a local plant, animal or landscape feature which characterises that country and this name plus the suffix -gal identifies the people of that area. The Bemerangal had responsibility for the area which now includes the towns and villages of Adaminaby, Bredbo, Numeralla, Cooma and Jindabyne. The Bemerangal seasonally travelled to and from the coast, through the country of relatives, along traditional travel routes which took them down the Tuross River to Bodalla. The highest mountains were not the country of any specific group but were sites of important secret meetings and ceremonies in which qualified individuals from many neighbouring groups took part. Major camps were established in areas such as Jindabyne and Adaminaby where the groups assembled for summer hunting and gathering and also preparation for the mountain ceremonies. The flooding of the Eucumbene and Jindabyne valleys has hidden many of these campsites. However the large numbers of stone tools which can be seen around the edges of the lakes indicate that many camps were established higher up the valley sides to escape cold air drainage in the valleys. The arrival of Europeans led to the deaths of many of the people through disease and violence and most were gradually forced off their country. Some remained working on properties so that they could try to care for their country, others settled elsewhere or were forced on to Aboriginal reserves.Rod Mason, Indigenous Education and Community Liaison Officer, Kosciuszko National Park
Pastoral Settlement, 1827–1957 Richard Brooks, the first European settler to the Monaro, attracted by the vast areas of open, treeless countryside, brought cattle grazing to the Eucumbene valley and Adaminaby Plain in 1827. By 1831 he had been joined by William Faithfull and Captain Joseph Thompson. The census taken in 1839 by the Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Monaro District recorded a handful of settlements around the Eucumbene River, including Charles York and Henry Cosgrove in the vicinity of the area that became the town of Adaminaby. In 1848 York and Cosgrove applied for the Adumindumee run of . George Young Mould, a physician from Edinburgh who had arrived in Sydney in 1840, reached the Monaro district in 1846. In 1853 he took up acreage, establishing his property Boconnoc in the Eucumbene valley. He also established one of the first stores in the earliest township of Old Adaminaby in 1862. In 1866 he built Boconnoc homestead which the Mould family continued to occupy until the Snowy Hydro Electric Authority (the Authority) acquired it in the 1950s. In the second half of the nineteenth century significant pastoral enterprises developed in the Eucumbene valley. With good grazing land available and proximity to the town of Old Adaminaby, the area became well populated by a thriving community living and working on small and large pastoral holdings. Other families in the district who farmed the land for generations were the Herberts, Reynolds, Mackays, Delanys, McPhies and Haslingdens. Some of the earliest properties were established at Old Adaminaby, Eucumbene, Frying Pan and Buckenderra. In the twentieth century others such as Studlands, Wainui, Warwick and Hemsby were built up. Along the Eucumbene River most pastoral holdings were on the eastern side of the river where the country was an open, undulating plain. Some grazing was carried out on the western side but land there was more treed, rocky and rugged. Traditionally, lower pastures were used for winter grazing and stock were taken to higher country for summer grazing on what became known as the "snow leases". The lease season was from 1 December to 31 May and it was a race to get stock up there to claim the best pastures. The lives of these stockmen, their horses and horsemanship has become one of Australia's most significant legends. Transhumance was an important practice for the pastoralists of the Snowy Mountains.
Development of the town of Old Adaminaby, 1859–1949 Charles York had left the Adaminaby area by 1859, leaving his property in the hands of his three stockmen who lived in a small group of huts on the eastern side of the Eucumbene valley, overlooking the river. In 1858 that there was only one homestead between Cooma and Adaminaby, which was Mr Harnett's Eucumbene. The discovery of gold at nearby Kiandra in 1859 led to a sudden influx of miners travelling the tracks from Cooma or Jindabyne, all of whom passed by the little group of slab and bark buildings on their way to the Eucumbene river crossing. The little settlement became a staging post for travellers during the Kiandra gold rush. In 1860, one of York's stockmen, Joseph Chalker, built the first hotel in the hamlet, directly opposite his original hut. A post office was also established, with two stores following in 1861and 1862 in the hamlet that was initially known as Chalker's. A village was surveyed and noted in the NSW Government Gazette in 1861, when it was renamed Seymour by the surveyor (the maiden name of his wife). That year the first blocks of land were sold, the first purchaser being Joseph Chalker. Sparked by the Kiandra gold rush, the town continued to grow steadily and by 1877 its population of 400 supported three hotels and three stores.
In 1886 the name was altered to Adaminaby (to avoid confusion with Seymour in Victoria). Adaminaby became a thriving small town supported by local pastoralists and travellers crossing the high ranges. In 1892 there were five general stores, two butchers, a baker and two blacksmiths. A butter factory was built in 1895 and a stone court house in 1895. By the beginning of the 20th century a picture theatre, five general stores, a racecourse and a showground had been established and there was a ball each Friday night and a dance on Saturday nights. The Kyloe Copper Mine boosted the town's economy and Adaminaby was starting to look as if it would rival Cooma in size.
By the 1920s Adaminaby could boast a watchmaker, cafes and tea rooms, a cabinet maker, a local paper, a hospital, a doctor, two schools, a showground and a racecourse. The population during the 1940s was 750, although the town also provided for hundreds of people living in the nearby rural areas.
Over original Adaminaby's century of life the town grew but changed little and never had modern amenities. There was no connection to the electricity grid, water supply or sewerage system. People supplied their own light, usually kerosene lamps and candles and a number of businesses had diesel generators. Rain water was collected in tanks and some people had wells. Cans were collected weekly from the outside dunnies. Residents remember it as a close-knit, happy community where the winters were "harsh, cold, wet and windy" and heavy snowfalls were a regular occurrence.
Roads and bridges In the mid 1850s a better road system was required for rural areas and local communities agitated for properly made roads and bridges to be built to cross creeks and rivers instead of having to rely on punts and unreliable causeways. Financial constraints resulted in most bridges being simply designed and made of hardwood. For long spans a timber laminated arch had to be built which was difficult construct and costly to maintain.
The truss system, which developed from ancient timber roof truss designs, proved to be a good option. The first truss system used in Australia, known as the Old PWD Truss, was soon recognised as having some intrinsic problems, such as sourcing the large timber sections required.
In 1879 John A. McDonald, one of the first specialist bridge engineers to join the PWD (Public Works Department), started designing a new timber truss bridge which was easier and less costly to build, cheaper to maintain and with greater carrying capacity. His design became known as the McDonald Truss which differentiated McDonald bridges from later truss designs, such as the Allan Truss and the DeBurgh Truss. According to the NSW Roads & Traffic Authority between 1886 and 1893, 91 McDonald Truss bridges were built. Newspapers reported a McDonald Truss bridge was built over the Snowy River at Jindabyne in 1893.
The Six Mile Bridge, across the Eucumbene River, is believed to have been constructed about the same time as the Jindabyne bridge and, similarly, is a McDonald type truss design.
The bridge served its purpose for half a century until it was partly demolished in 1957. The trusses were removed and the bridge was expected to collapse but it didn't fall down as predicted. A fire was started in an effort to burn it down but again the bridge resisted. The structure remained standing while the waters rose around it.
Roads had sprawled out across the country side linking farms and settlements as circumstance required. In the early days there was little official planning and well worn tracks developed into roads. Adaminaby was at the junction of roads coming from Cooma and Jindabyne and the main road that travelled up the mountains to Kiandra and across the range. When the Eucumbene River was dammed these old routes were cut, isolating some communities from others and disrupting social and commercial interaction.
Industrial development Growth of the Adaminaby township was stimulated by two major mining booms. First was the gold rush to Kiandra, about 30 km west of Old Adaminaby, which began in 1859 and only lasted a few years. Thousands of miners travelled along the one track that passed through the original township of Old Adaminaby.
Despite some lucrative finds, the harsh environment and diminishing returns resulted in Kiandra's once populous gold field being suddenly deserted after 1860. By August 1863, following another severe winter, it was reported that the township was "tenantless" and the buildings were "falling into decay".
In 1900 a gold dredging company commenced operations on the Kiandra plain with some reasonable results. Their activities lasted for three years until the site was deemed worked out and the dredging equipment moved over the range to Tumbarumba.
At the same time as the 1860s Kiandra gold rush, copper was discovered at Kyloe, across the Eucumbene River from old Adaminaby. A shaft was sunk in 1872 but after a few attempts at obtaining ore the mine was abandoned. No real work proceeded until 1901 when Litchfield and Hassal extracted of copper. The Shaeffer Bros took over the lease in 1904 and, in the next three years, sent some of ore to a smelting company. The Shaeffers sold the mine to the Kyloe Mining Company in 1907 and work began to improve the site, extend the shaft and build furnaces and other facilities to enable processing.