LETTER FROM AUSTRALIA: Thredbo is a tiny, one-street village in south-western New South Wales, near the Victorian border. It's even smaller than the west Limerick village I grew up in writes Pádraig Collins
But Thredbo is on the foothills of Australia's highest mountain, Mt Kosciuszko, and was the scene seven years ago of a landslide that killed 18 people.
At around 11.40 p.m. on July 30th, 1997, hundreds of tonnes of earth came away from a steep slope above Thredbo. The force of the landslide ripped up Carinya Lodge, as well as trees and cars, and smashed them all into Bimbadeen Lodge. Witnesses, and those woken by this example of nature at its cruellest, described the roar as being like a jet taking off, an express train or a hurricane. At the moment of the disaster there was only one person living in Carinya Lodge, but there were 18 in Bimbadeen Lodge. With the temperature dropping to nine below zero and the possibility of further landslides, it seemed impossible that anyone would emerge alive from the wreckage of Bimbadeen.
But, incredibly, rescuers heard faint cries from deep beneath the rubble 53 hours after the landslide. Because of the delicacy of the operation, it would be another 12 hours before ski instructor Stuart Diver was carried out on a stretcher.
In that time, warm air was circulated through a pipe to increase his body temperature, which was dangerously low. Another tube carried rehydration fluids from which he was only allowed two sips every 20-minutes - any more and he risked going into shock. At one point a siren sounded to clear the site because of possible landslides, but two rescue workers in communication with Mr Diver refused to leave.
He had been trapped beneath a slab of concrete, which, ironically, had kept him alive because of the angle at which it had fallen. For a short time Mr Diver's wife, Sally, was trapped alongside him. He had been holding her hand when a surge of water had ripped her from his grip and drowned her. Three years later, following a coronial inquiry, NSW state coroner Derrick Hand blamed inaction by authorities over many years as one of the major causes of the landslide.
Thredbo resident Roger Hinkler will never forget the impact of the night that 18 people died. "It was devastating because it was one-tenth of the village," he told The Irish Times. "Everyone lost friends in the landslide." "People hung on to their grief for a long time. The 2000 season was the first one with positive, happy vibes after the disaster. People light candles every year on the anniversary, but most are getting on with their lives."
For many people outside of the Antipodes, news of the Thredbo disaster was the first time they heard of Australia having snow. Similar misconceptions prevailed in the late 1940s when thousands of workers were sourced from Europe to work on the construction of the Snowy Mountain Scheme.
Speaking about the scheme at the University of Melbourne in 1999, former Victoria governor Sir James Gobbo said: "They had no idea that it would be so cold. One group, as they travelled to Australia, in a symbolic gesture of escape from European winters, threw their blankets and heavy warm clothing overboard."
Considered to be one of the world's greatest engineering feats, Snowy Hydro today harnesses water for agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin of NSW and Victoria, and provides 70 per cent of all renewable energy to Australia's eastern mainland grid.
Two-thirds of the 100,000 workers that were involved in the scheme's construction between 1949 and 1974 were migrants from 30 different countries, including Ireland.
The late Patrick O'Farrell, in his book The Irish In Australia, wrote that the arrival of these Irish (mostly men) contributed to a big revival in Gaelic sports and in membership of organisations such as the cumbersomely named League for an Undivided Ireland.
The Snowy Mountain Scheme is widely held to be the birthplace of multiculturalism in Australia. "There were many teething problems in assembling workers drawn from countries which had only recently been locked in bitter conflict," said Mr Gobbo.
Many of the German workers had fought in the second World War; some had been members of the Nazi Party. In the Snowys they were working and living alongside Poles, Czechs, English and Australian ex-servicemen. The Germans were initially segregated in their own huts, but this only served to reinforce the sense of hostility.
"At night they got little sleep as the other workers bombarded the tin roofs of their huts with stones," said Mr Gobbo.
"There was a change of policy and the various ethnic groups were mixed together. There was a noticeable improvement - for one thing the rock-throwing stopped for obvious reasons. Slowly but surely there was a real improvement. The bonds of friendship replaced old prejudices in most cases. The exception was the continuing fierce enmity between Croats and Serbs."
The Murray 1 power station in Khancoban (76 kms from Thredbo) is open to the public and is a magnificent testimony to what mankind can do.
The only sour point on a wonderful trip was the distressing amount of kangaroos lying dead by the side of the road. We saw at least 30 within about 100 kms of Thredbo. It seems that the poor roos - surely one of the cutest creatures on earth - are not all that bright when it comes to avoiding traffic.