Mrs Ampt recalls that day in Melbourne in 1951 when Bob trawling through the newspaper stumbled upon the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority advertisement calling for engineers.

“It was just after the war. We had a new baby and were very interested in the house provided,” Mrs Ampt said.

“My husband said what do you think?”

“So we had to move to Sydney at that stage because their office was in Sydney.”

The Amps rented a house in Sydney and Mr Ampt travelled by bus then a ferry to Circular Key where a private car awaited him each morning to take him to the office in the city.

“We rented a house at Harbord in Sydney, which was lovely in those days,” Mrs Ampt said.

In 1953 Mr Ampt was sent off to London to ensure the equipment necessary to build the first T1 power station in Cabramurra was to specification and was what was required to do the job.

“They wouldn’t pay for wives and children then so I paid my own way,” Mrs Ampt said.

“You could imagine how sour I’d have been if I’d had to stay here for a whole year by myself.”

The overseas work took Mr Ampt to Sweden, France and Italy and the couple were party to Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation ceremony.

“In the beginning it was all built overseas. We didn’t have the expertise. Post war Australia was short of a lot of things, man power, money...” Mrs Ampt said.

“It was coronation year and London was very festive, decorated with flags and baskets hanging from all of the buildings.”

Once their overseas adventure had drawn to a close the Amps, now a family of four headed back to Sydney for a short while before moving to Cooma permanently in 1955 where the Snowy construction was well underway.

Mrs Ampt remembers the shock of arriving in Cooma for the first time.

“It was a hot dusty day, it was dry and windy and the children were grizzly from the long car trip. The road from Canberra was shocking in those days it was a real bone rattler. Cooma looked like the end of the world,” she said.