Cotter Dam Expansion. Tickets going for behind the scenes tour.

I was a bit dissapointed as well. I went last year and the bus took us up to the Pierces Creek area where there seemed to be a lot more happenning and to see rather than the Mt McDonald area we were taken this time which was about a km away from the worksite as the crow flys. As ABC129 said nothing really that you can’t see from the road.Would of liked to have been given a choice which tour to go on. On the upside the weather was a lot better this year.

Concrete construction tour disappoints?

What did people expect from this, it’s not like they’d actually ever be allowed to take members of the public down to the main construction site.

Keijidosha said :

Well the tour was no longer than about 25 minutes. It involved a short bus trip via the southern abutment to “Kels lookout” atop a hill about 1km from the back of the dam wall. Here we were allowed off the bus for a 5-10 minute viewing. It was so windy that I couldn’t hear much of what the tour guide was saying. (Given the conditions it would have made more sense for him to explain everything on the bus before we got out).

After this we got back on the bus and trundled over to the batching plant where the bus promptly did a U-turn and paused for 30 seconds before heading back down the hill. Along the way our guide pointed out the construction equipment and quoted some figures. He fielded a few questions from the group and the tour was over.

I had higher expectations as the invitation email I recieved (same as the article above) was perhaps a little misleading in suggesting that “Visitors will experience:” aspects of the dam construction. Perhaps if it was worded to say “Visitors will see from a distance:” I might not have become so enthusiastic about the prospect of a hard-hat style tour of the construction area.

In all honesty I got a better appreciation of the scale of works from Cotter Road on the drive out there. The Cotter Dam Discovery Trail is also a wealth of useful information and gives an impressive view of the new dam construction area.

While I agree that it was probably slightly oversold, I’m not sure what people expected for $5 that all went to charity.
I enjoyed the tour and was grateful for the opportunity. I wasn’t surprised by all of the repeated questioning of the guide by people too important to have listened to the guy the first 5 times he explained things.
Perfect example of being able to please some of the people some of the time, and most Canberrans none of the time.
This type of mentality leads to people saying ‘stuff you then, we won’t bother at all’.

Interesting that you point out there were two tours. As our bus rattled along, someone pointed out another group on top of the northern abutment and asked the guide if we would be going up there. His response? “Um, nah, I think that’s organised by some other mob”.

So it seems nobody was informed that there were two different tours.

What would have been really good is if they could have some of the trucks/earth moving equipment down at the start point so the kids could see the scale of some of the things they are using up close.
Also if they could put a couple of high-viz markers on the other side of the valley to show the final water level that would be fantastic.

I too left a little underwhelmed by the tour, but fundamentally it is a construction site at the moment and I’m not sure what more I honestly expected.
I get a decent enough view of what’s going on every time I ride the Cotter/Uriarra loop though 🙂

Keijidosha said :

Well the tour was no longer than about 25 minutes. It involved a short bus trip via the southern abutment to “Kels lookout” atop a hill about 1km from the back of the dam wall….

I was interested on the day that there appeared to be two different options, yet at no point had that been expressed in advance. From the sounds of it, I went on the better of the two…

Well the tour was no longer than about 25 minutes. It involved a short bus trip via the southern abutment to “Kels lookout” atop a hill about 1km from the back of the dam wall. Here we were allowed off the bus for a 5-10 minute viewing. It was so windy that I couldn’t hear much of what the tour guide was saying. (Given the conditions it would have made more sense for him to explain everything on the bus before we got out).

After this we got back on the bus and trundled over to the batching plant where the bus promptly did a U-turn and paused for 30 seconds before heading back down the hill. Along the way our guide pointed out the construction equipment and quoted some figures. He fielded a few questions from the group and the tour was over.

I had higher expectations as the invitation email I recieved (same as the article above) was perhaps a little misleading in suggesting that “Visitors will experience:” aspects of the dam construction. Perhaps if it was worded to say “Visitors will see from a distance:” I might not have become so enthusiastic about the prospect of a hard-hat style tour of the construction area.

In all honesty I got a better appreciation of the scale of works from Cotter Road on the drive out there. The Cotter Dam Discovery Trail is also a wealth of useful information and gives an impressive view of the new dam construction area.

johnboy said :

How so?

Well, in my case, we got on the bus, drove up to the top of the left abutment, stood looking for a while, then drove back down. It was very cool to see the sight from there, and the ACTEW engineer who was with us was nice, gave an overview of the project and answered questions, but calling it a “tour” was probably overselling it a little.

Nice day out in the sun though.

How so?

Wow, what a disappointment this tour was. I wholeheartedly encourage the support of Marymead, but the hype of this event exceeded the reality by a wide margin. Such a let down.