Mum and I took Grand Master D and Miss Gremlin out to Lake Hume or the weir as the locals call it, to show them around. They’ve never been there and it’s full for the first time in many, many years. It’s been as low as 10%, so it was exciting for us all to see the spillway blasting water out. There is a hydro electric station that produces power for the local area.
Lake Hume supplies water to Albury and surrounding areas. It also acts as a recreational place for thousands of people with many resorts on the foreshores around the lake. Several towns are on the waters edge. People fish and boat, ski and camp and do all the things that you do around a large body of water.
It began construction in 1919 and took 17 years to complete and claimed a number of lives in the process. In the 1950’s it was extended and the whole town of Tallangatta had to be relocated to higher ground to accommodate the extra catchment area.
Not so long ago in the 1990’s, there was great concern the wall was shifting and traffic was halted from driving across the wall, which was of major excitement to us as kids and the government spent millions on shoring it all up to avert impending disaster. They built a secondary wall structure to add strength to the original construction. This makes wall area much larger. They haven’t really told us the extend of the concern but it’s been rumoured that it was a very worrying time and far worse than officials ever let on.
There is no foot traffic across the wall either which was a shame because it would have been fun for the kids to be able to go across. It was a weekday though and there were ‘wall walk’ signs so I imagine they open the wall up for foot traffic on the weekends. Just to keep it to a minimum, lest we all end up in Adelaide on a giant Murray wave.
The kids enjoyed it anyway and we topped it of with an ice cream from the old store.