Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme, by Ann Tündern-Smith

Bonegilla "peninsula" and Hume Reservoir

If you look at an old map of north-eastern Victoria, one drawn before construction of the Hume Weir (now the Hume Dam) on the Murray River started in 1919, you can see that the Bonegilla area resembles a peninsula. It has rivers on 3 sides rather than seas. The Mitta Mitta River was its eastern boundary, the Murray River flowed across the north, and the Kiewa River bounded its western side.

The shaded area is the Bonegilla run in 1869, 
between the Kiewa, Murray and Mitta Mitta Rivers
Source:  Bonegilla's Beginnings, redrawn from Owen's Atlas

One arm of the former Hume Reservoir, renamed Lake Hume, has flooded what was the course of the Mitta Mitta some 15 kilometres past its former confluence with the Murray. It forms the part of the Lake where Bonegilla camp residents used to walk and swim, when they did not travel further to the Murray below the Weir.

Mitta Mitta River

Major engineering works have affected further the two Murray River tributaries which form the Bonegilla “peninsula”. Near the source of the Mitta Mitta at Mount Bogong, 200 kilometres upstream from the Hume Dam, the Dartmouth Dam with Australia’s tallest dam wall at 180 metres impounds the Mitta Mitta, the Dart, and other rivers and creeks. Like Lake Hume, its main purposes are irrigation and hydro-electric power. The rockfill embankment was built between 1973 and 1979.

Kiewa River

We are mostly interest in a third engineering project, the hydro-electric scheme on the Kiewa River. That’s because 26 of the First Transport men were sent there for their first employment in Australia, on 14 January 1948.   

Their cards say, "SEC, Kiewa, Vic".  Given that the town of Bogong had been established as the base for construction of the Kiewa Scheme, it’s very likely that the men were sent there, to the Kiewa Scheme rather than the town of Kiewa. 

The Kiewa town is only 18 kilometres south of the Bonegilla camp by road. Bogong is another 80 kilometres south.  It might have been an unsealed road in 1948-49, but the men still would have been perhaps two hours away from their initial home in Australia.

They all should have been notified before 30 September 1948 that they were not contracted from after that date to work in Australia.  Romas Ragauskas' citizenship file shows that he stayed in the Bogong town until a date in October 1949.   He then moved to Eildon, closer to Melbourne, for what he probably thought was an even better job.

The Kiewa Hydro-electric Scheme as envisaged in 1948 by the State Electricity Commission

Source:  SECV via Wikipedia

First Transport to Kiewa Scheme

The 26 men sent to the Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme on 14 January 1948 were

Lithuanians	Latvians
Antanaitis, Jonas	Auzans, Mikelis
Gulbinas, Valentinas	Draska, Stanislav
Jovarauskas, Jonas	Jansons, Ansis Alfreds
Lesniauskas, Vaclovas	Kajons, Peteris
Malzinkas, Vincas	Karklins, Alfreds
Ragauskas, Romas-Karolis	Koks, Hugo
Raudonikas, Petras	Kolesnikovs, Janis
Vaicius, Pranas	Krumins, Arvids
Valasinavicius, Petras	Muske, Janis Andrejs
Vaskelis, Stasys	Ozolins, Eduards
Venckus, Petras	Skuja, Janis
Warapnizkas, Anton*
Zabiela, Benediktas	Estonians
	Kull, Heino
	Saad, Ilmar

In the previous blog entry on Romas Ragauskas, we noted that the Victorian Government’s instrumentality, the State Electricity Commission, had recommended in 1937 that a scheme first proposed in 1911 should proceed. World War II then took away much of the workforce, but building parts of the Scheme continued. The arrival of more labour in January 1948 would have been welcomed.

Economic conditions in the 1950s meant that the Scheme never was completed as envisaged. The politics of the 1990s meant that the Scheme now is in private hands. It probably is an awareness of climate change and the role hydro-electricity can play in its mitigation that means the Scheme had been expanding in recent years.

If I come across a description of working conditions on the Kiewa Scheme in the late 1940s, I'll share it here. And any of the First Transport workmen who, like Romas Ragauskas, get a biography of their own will also have a hyperlink in the table above.

Footnote: *It looks like this Lithuanian has Germanised his name but not yet changed back. A Lithuanian is more likely to recognise Antanas Varapnickas.

Sources

Owen, W (1869) Atlas of Australia including pastoral runs of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria Melbourne, H Bolton

Tündern-Smith, Ann (2014) Bonegilla's Beginnings, Wagga Wagga, NSW; Triple D Books (p 14).

Wikipedia, 'Mitta Mitta River' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitta_Mitta_River, accessed 14 October 2025.

Wikipedia, 'Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiewa_Hydroelectric_Scheme, accessed 14 October 2025.

Wikipedia, 'Kiewa River', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiewa_River#:~:text=The%20Kiewa%20River%20is%20also,wher%2Dra%2C%20meaning%20water, accessed 14 October 2025