Visit Roxburgh Dam in Lake Roxburgh Village: 50 Years of Construction Camps and Single Purpose

This book covers the Power Station built on the Clutha at the mouth of the Roxburgh Gorge in the 1950s and the associated Lake Hawea storage dam that maintains the Clutha's winter flow. In the decades following World War II, New Zealand faced a continuous and rapid growth in the demand for electricity that created great pressure on the Government to build the generating capacity that would satisfy that demand. There was also a great shortage of manpower in New Zealand. Power in the...
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This book covers the Power Station built on the Clutha at the mouth of the Roxburgh Gorge in the 1950s and the associated Lake Hawea storage dam that maintains the Clutha's winter flow. In the decades following World War II, New Zealand faced a continuous and rapid growth in the demand for electricity that created great pressure on the Government to build the generating capacity that would satisfy that demand. There was also a great shortage of manpower in New Zealand. Power in the South Island was rationed with restrictive supply regulations and blackouts. The Government's solution was to start construction of a major power scheme on the Clutha River at Roxburgh. When progress was slower than expected, a newly elected Government decided to call tenders from international contractors who could bring in the needed resources to speed up the job. The successful contractors, a consortium of an English and a Swiss firm, did not perform well. Eighteen months into the work the Government intervened and both the contract and the contractor were changed. The book covers these changes; the setting up of the temporary construction village, Roxburgh Hydro; the construction of both dams, and the changes that have been needed in the fifty-five years since it started to generate power. It makes an interesting story. The book includes many photographs depicting progress and shows the staff of both the Contractor and the Government Departments along with a list of their names. Regrettably, the Authors were unable to find any record of the names of the many people employed in the workforce.