[1][2] Richard Brooks, the first European settler to the Monaro, attracted by the vast areas of open, treeless countryside, brought cattle grazing to the Eucumbene valley and Adaminaby Plain in 1827.

The census taken in 1839 by the Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Monaro District recorded a handful of settlements around the Eucumbene River, including Charles York and Henry Cosgrove in the vicinity of the area that became the town of Adaminaby.

With good grazing land available and proximity to the town of Old Adaminaby, the area became well populated by a thriving community living and working on small and large pastoral holdings.

[1] Charles York had left the Adaminaby area by 1859, leaving his property in the hands of his three stockmen who lived in a small group of huts on the eastern side of the Eucumbene valley, overlooking the river.

The discovery of gold at nearby Kiandra in 1859 led to a sudden influx of miners travelling the tracks from Cooma or Jindabyne, all of whom passed by the little group of slab and bark buildings on their way to the Eucumbene river crossing.

[1] By the 1920s Adaminaby could boast a watchmaker, cafes and tea rooms, a cabinet maker, a local paper, a hospital, a doctor, two schools, a showground and a racecourse.

Five bullock drivers were employed as well as a number of other men whose jobs were to dig the wheels out of bogs, build up roads and move sleepers which had to be placed on soft ground.

[1] Taking advantage of melted snow and diverting the waters of the Snowy River was first discussed in the middle of the 19th century after Australia's new pastoralists had experienced a succession of droughts and had begun to acknowledge how dry the continent really was.

In June 1953 the Australian Geographical Walkabout Magazine reported that the dam was only going to be near Adaminaby and that the town would have the advantage of being sited at the edge of a large and attractive lake.

[1] A major road was built to carry heavy earthmoving equipment from Adaminaby down to the river, a construction township established and work began on the dam site while preparations were being made for a diversion tunnel.

Questions arose regarding adequate compensation for all the years of work taken to develop businesses and properties as well as the loss of homes where several generations of families had lived.

In the 1950s Adaminaby comprised a main street lined with Victorian buildings including some graceful two-storeyed verandahed shops and hotels and a number of single-storey colonial stores.

[1] The Authority built the new township of Adaminaby comprising a modern shopping centre, hotel, theatre, two schools, sporting clubs and facilities, a race course and a show ground.

The Authority warned that the lake could rise quite quickly and people found they had to abandon all sorts of items such as stoves and farm equipment when the water cut off-road access to their properties.

Precipitation has been lower than at any time on record and snow levels are only medium to low owing to generally higher temperatures and fewer moisture- bearing clouds.

This was not the case in the first six months of 2007 when there were numerous reports of large objects, such as sulkies, drays and farm machinery, as well as an entire stone-and-brick house at Braemar Bay, being removed.

Council erected signs on the foreshores alerting the public to the fact that Lake Eucumbene was a heritage site and that removing or damaging any relics was an offence punishable by law with the possibility of fines up to $1.1 million.

Masonry relics such as concrete slabs, bricks and stones, indicate the location of many buildings, old vehicles, stoves and general household items left behind after the move that were covered with water.

None of these four buildings nor the cemetery is within the draft curtilage for this site: Norwegian Jens Olsen (who changed his name to James Holston) was an early settler in the Eucumbene valley in the late 1850s.

Recently the original 140-year-old structure has been dismantled and all the stones and bricks illegally removed leaving little evidence other than old orchard trees and a fuel stove.

When the Herbert family bought the property in the early 20th century improvements comprised, among other things, the original homestead, stone and timber stables and sheep yards.

In about 1948 Alice Reynolds, who lived at the neighbouring Grace Lea property, wrote in a school project that there was a pump on the Eucumbene River which supplied water to the copper mine up until it closed in 1913 (original material provided by David Kennedy).

According to Frank Rodwell's "Homes on the Range" the camp consisted of Vandyke prefabricated barracks and huts erected by Architon Construction Co. of Cooma for the Public Works Department.

Old beer bottles, relics from the rubbish dump, well below high water mark, have 1957 stamped on the bottom indicating that it was around that year that the camp was closed.

It was established by the NSW Public Works Department, which had been awarded the contract to build Eucumbene Dam, on land acquired by the Snowy Mountains Authority.

As far as the (Snowy Mountains) Authority was concerned, the Department had been too busy settling in to do the work it had been contracted to do – namely build a dam.”[6]Eucumbene had a centrally located shopping centre including general store, petrol station, butcher, chemist, post office, bank and town hall.

At the north end of the town was a large works area with several workshops where servicing, repair and maintenance of the trucks and mobile plant that was used on the dam and tunnel construction was performed.

The inundation of Old Adaminaby and the surrounding pastoral districts to create the Lake Eucumbene dam is associated with the significant historical activity of the Snowy Scheme.

The termination of lifestyles, associations, customs, and traditions has left many among this community marked by long standing sadness, resentment and bitterness for the events that gave rise to their removal, and for the way in which it was managed.

The relics of Old Adaminaby and the surrounding districts on Lake Eucumbene's floor are evidence of more than a century of pastoral life, development of a hamlet into a town, previous mining practices and the lives and working conditions of men employed on the Snowy Scheme, which was one of Australia's greatest engineering achievements.