Farmer Dean Lynch spruiking Snowy 2.0 to NSW high country

SNOWY 2.0’s greatest advocate lives on its doorstep, writes SARAH HUDSON.

Mountain men: Farmer, community leader and Snowy 2.0 relations manager Dean Lynch with his dad, Keith.

FARMERS are renowned multitaskers.

But Dean Lynch takes this to a whole new level.

The 54-year-old runs his family’s fifth generation farm Kunuma Angus Stud — Australia’s highest elevated Angus stud at 1400m (“the bulls have skis”) — at Adaminaby, alongside his dad and son.

For eight years he was also the Cooma-Monaro mayor (“I believe you’ve got to put up or shut up”), before becoming the administrator of three amalgamated shires.

But Dean’s biggest project so far has been in the past year — selling Snowy Hydro’s Snowy 2.0 project to the high country community of southern NSW, as the company’s relations manager.

Switching between livestock markets and the National Electricity Market would boggle most people’s minds.

But Dean, who up to this job never worked for Snowy Hydro, takes it in his stride.

“This morning I was on the farm and I always have my iPhone with me and so I took four calls and sent emails about Snowy Hydro while out in the paddock,” Dean says of his continued role on the 1620ha farm.

“As a farmer and a former mayor you end up being pretty well connected to the community and so I think that’s why they saw me as well suited to this role.

“I love my cattle, but this is exciting to be part of an infrastructure scheme that initially changed the nation and may even change the fortunes of Australia again.”

As relations manager for Snowy Hydro 2.0, it is Dean’s job to keep affected towns — from Tumut to Tumbarumba and Khancoban to Cooma — informed about former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s pet project.

Flicking the switch: Former prime minister Robert Menzies in one of the control centres of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

Chatting over a coffee at the Snowy Hydro Discovery Centre in Cooma, Dean says the project — if given the green light by the NSW Government and Snowy Hydro board next month — will expand the existing Snowy Scheme by linking two dams with 27km of tunnels and creating a power station with pumping capabilities.

Dean says most of his family — especially his 94-year-old father Keith — has fond memories of the original Snowy Hydro scheme.

“My mother doesn’t have the best memories because she was born in the old Adaminaby, which is now under a lake and they moved away,” he says.

“But my dad grew up on the farm and says it was the best thing that ever happened. The farm had no power at the time and so when the scheme went right past our gate we got power and roads.

“Dad says he was the last farmer to drove stock through Cooma. He would bring a mob of sheep up the main street of the town. But one day — it was around knock-off time for staff on the Snowy Scheme — it was gridlock. After that droving was banned in Cooma’s streets.”

All up, the Snowy Scheme employed 100,000 people from more than 30 countries during construction from 1949 to 1974.

“My own memories of the Snowy Scheme was of being in school with children from lots of different nationalities,” Dean says.

“Everyone was accepting of them. All I cared about was whether they were any good at footy.”

To understand the scale of the original project, it pays to visit the Snowy Hydro Discovery Centre in Cooma.

Now recognised as one of the greatest engineering wonders of the modern world, the Snowy Scheme covers a water catchment area of 5124sq km, or seven townships, has nine power stations, 16 major dams and 145km of tunnels, with just 2 per cent of construction work visible above ground.

Some parts of history, though, you’ll only hear from locals — including the fact that federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor is a grandson of the scheme’s chief engineer, Sir William Hudson.

“The Taylors are one of the largest landholders in the area and are a well-known local family,” Dean says.

“Other little known facts include that Cooma was the first place in Australia to have a coffee machine, because of the immigrants, and Snowy Hydro workers were the first in Australia required to wear seatbelts.”