Dam booming was a boon for workers

By Kath Gannaway
WHEN the Upper Yarra Reservoir was opened in 1957 it tripled Melbourne’s water storage to nearly 300,000 megalitres.
Vern Hort, now 94, worked on the dam in the last two years of construction. He remembers that the dam filled much quicker than expected.
“They didn’t think it would fill for another 12 months but we had that much rain that first winter it brought it up very quickly,” he said remembering his days as a drill operator.
In what sounds today like the stuff of dreams, he recalls he’s seen the massive overflow chute put to good use twice. A real spectacle.
“We’d have been in real strife if that dam hadn’t been built when it was,” he observes.
The dam was opened by the Governor of Victoria General Sir Dallas Brooks and on Sunday 25 November and Melbourne Water will celebrate the 50th anniversary of what was not only a great achievement for the then Melbourne & Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) and Victoria but a project which for nine years was very much part of the lives of families in the Upper Yarra.
The two years Vern spent at the dam was a brief break from his work in the timber industry. But he says it was an interesting job and one where he made lots of friends.
He operated a machine which drilled the holes for the explosives used to blast the rock.
“We worked three shifts, morning, afternoon and night shifts, so you had teams working 24 hours a day.”
Unlike the Maroondah Dam which was completed 50 years earlier, Mr Hort said it wasn’t hard work.
“Nobody had to work hard because they had that much machinery there to do it,” he said.
It was a boon for the Upper Yarra towns because it was almost a decade of solid employment and, he recalls, there was a lot of overtime worked.
It wasn’t, however, without its dangers. Mr Hort and his best mate Jack Bousman were lucky to escape with their lives when a huge truck came down on their machine after rain destabilised one of the roads.
He recalls a rock came down, hitting the truck which was above where they were drilling on the edge of a 50ft drop.
“It was noisy so the first we knew of it was when the truck came skidding across the top of us.
“Jack was trapped and couldn’t move with diesel running down his face.”
Their machine had been pushed almost to the edge of the drop, stopped fortuitously by the bucket of a crane working nearby.
While neither man was badly injured, they still had to be rescued from a fairly precarious position and that effort wasn’t without its dramas either as Mr Hort recalls.
“They jacked up the motor so I could get out and had me nearly out when the jack slipped and it went right back to where it had been.”
Mr Hort got out but he still bears the scar where he had the flesh on his leg, cooked by the hot exhaust pipe, cut away at the Warburton Hospital.
It’s just one of hundreds of stories about life on the Upper Yarra Dam project which people have shared over the past 50 years and which will, no doubt, get an airing later this month when workers and their families return for the anniversary celebrations.
Melbourne Water’s managing director Rob Skinner is encouraging the community to visit the reservoir to commemorate the completion of the dam wall.
Mr Skinner said many people have a connection with the reservoir which remains a vital part of Melbourne’s water supply infrastructure.
“Bring a picnic and enjoy the beautiful park scenery or tour the dam wall and discover the history of the former construction town,” Mr Skinner said.
The dam wall will be open to the public and free minibuses will operate between 10.30am and 3pm on the day.
For further information contact Melbourne Water on 131 722.