This was published 8 years ago
Cooma resident Margaret Keefe stars in Ghosts in the Scheme
Cooma's Margaret Keefe shares her stories of the Snowy Mountains Scheme ahead of her role in Ghosts in the Scheme at Canberra Theatre Centre.
By Clare Colley
Margaret Keefe left her family's property near Dalgety, about 50 kilometres from Cooma, for boarding school in Goulburn at 11-years-old.
When she moved back at the end of her schooling and settled in Cooma in 1955 the scheme was underway and the sleepy Snowys had transformed.
Cooma's Margaret Keefe will star in Ghosts in the Scheme at Canberra Theatre from September 2.Credit: Rohan Thomson
Drastic change was everywhere, the products sold in shops, "unheard of" menus in cafes, exotic languages and accents in the street.
The locals were divided.
"Some took a while before they acquired a taste and accepted there were other things you could use, try wear," Mrs Keefe said.
"People found at the start it was difficult dealing with so many foreign languages at once, it took some time for people to adjust to communication and even to actually start interacting with newcomers out here, but it happened over time and people became used to it."
Working as a clerical assistant at a radio station, and later a doctor's surgery, Mrs Keefe came to face with the scheme's multicultural workforce.
Even more so when she met and married her husband Bill who worked as a police officer in many of the construction towns that sprang up during the scheme's construction including Cabramurra – the highest town in Australia.
"When my oldest two sons were little and we were living in one of the construction towns… there were nine different nationalities in one class."
When Mr Keefe had to travel for court cases she often stepped up to police work, answering the phones, taking messages and dealing with at times distressed people who knocked on the door or sometimes walked straight into her home unannounced when the police station was unmanned.
At times it was frightening being virtually alone with just her young children in the isolated mountain towns with weather that could descend into blizzard in an instant.
But for the most part like other locals she just lived life as normally as possible.
Dealing with brawls between workers, searching for missing people, delivering grim news about fatalities on the construction sites was all part of Mr Keefe's job.
After several years living in the construction towns dotted though the Snowys the family moved from Jindabyne in 1968 when Mr Keefe was transferred to Newcastle for 10 years.
After a further transfer to Leeton where he retired, the pair returned to Cooma and although it's no longer a hive of activity she wouldn't live anywhere else.
For one thing segregation between Snowy Hydro workers and other locals no longer exists.
"The population was about 10,000 at that stage in town and now it's decreased to about 8000 people," she said.
"It felt like home again after all that time, we've got a lot of facilities here and being close to Canberra is very handy and also to the coast."
Mrs Keefe has sung with the Cooma Harmony Chorus since it began 20 years ago, staging concerts in the Snowys, Canberra and other regional towns.
But Ghosts in the Scheme will be her biggest performance yet.