Tas That Was – Lake Margaret

The Lake Margaret power plant is one of Tasmania’s earliest hydroelectric developments.

Layout

The Lake Margaret power plant consists of a concrete gravity dam, two power stations (one of which was mothballed in 1994-95), and a workers’ village that includes cottages, quarters for single men, and a community hall.

History

In the early 1900s, the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company identified Lake Margaret – located in the upper Yolande River catchment of the West Coast Range – as an ideal site for a hydroelectric power plant to supply electricity to its operations around Queenstown.

Construction planning for the plant occurred in 1911, with building work starting shortly after. The headworks, dam, and two-kilometre wood-stave pipeline from Lake Margaret to the (upper) power station were constructed*, and the workers’ village was also built nearby.

The ‘Upper Lake Margaret Power Station’ was officially commissioned in 1914. It originally operated with four Pelton turbines, each generating around 1.2 megawatts. Two more units were installed later.

In 1924, the daughter of one of the workers at the power plant, Nellie Hartnett, wrote:

“I will tell you a little bit about Lake Margaret. […] There are a few houses here, and about ten children going to school. We have a long distance to go to school, and during the winter it is very cold.

“We had some snow here a few weeks ago, and it was terribly cold! Lake Margaret is lovely in the summer time, and a well-known tourist resort during that season.”

Between 1930 and 1933, the upper power station was expanded and a lower station was built. Once the work was complete, Lake Margaret supplied electricity to the mining community and the wider region.

The dam wall was strengthened in 1974 to maintain safety. Eleven years later, in 1985, Hydro Tasmania acquired the plant. In 1994-95, it decided to decommission the lower station due to aging infrastructure and safety concerns.

By 2006, the original wood-stave pipeline had reached the end of its lifespan and was at risk of failure, so Hydro Tasmania temporarily closed the upper station to replace it. The station was refurbished at the same time and recommissioned in 2009.

Lake Margaret marked its one hundredth anniversary as a hydroelectric power plant in 2014. It remains operational today, though it is partly automated. The workers’ village is heritage listed.

* Water from the dam flows down the pipe, feeding the penstocks and turbines at the power station to generate electricity.

References & Bibliography

• Lake Margaret – A Hydro Electric Power Scheme, Industrial Obsolescence and Rebirth
• New life at Lake Margaret (Hydro Tasmania)
• Lake Margaret Hydro-electric Scheme (Engineers Australia)
• Lake Margaret (Tas) Hydro Power Station Closure (Rail Trails Australia)
• Lake Margaret: Artists reflect on a century of life in the town that powered Queenstown’s boom days (ABC News)
• Lake Margaret Hydro-electric Scheme (Engineering Heritage Australia)
• Tasmania’s “Lake Margaret” (Advocate, 7 August 1924, page 37)

Tas That Was is a column that includes:

• anecdotes of life in Tasmania in the past;
• historical photographs of locations in Tasmania; and/or
• documentaries about locations in Tasmania.

If you have an anecdote or photograph you’d like to share with us, please send it to submit@tasmaniantimes.com.

Callum J. Jones is passionate about telling stories. He studied English, History, and Journalism at the University of Tasmania and lived in Western Sydney from 2022 to 2024 while working as a journalist for Professional Planner, a leading online publication for financial planners. Callum has written for Tasmanian Times since 2018 and has also been published in a range of other outlets, including Quadrant and the BAD Western Sydney anthologies.

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