AustLit

'They Came To Change The Course Of A River . . . And Changed The Course Of Their Lives.

'It was a time when refugees seized with both hands the chance for freedom; a time when people of more than seventy nations gathered beneath the Southern Cross to forge a new national identity. From war-torn Europe, they came to the mountains of Australia to realise one man's dream, and in so doing realised their own.

'The mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, regarded by many as the greatest engineering feat of the 20th Century, was built with pride from the sweat and blood of displaced people. They were called New Australians. One was 'Lucky', a German Jew seeking refuge in Australia after losing his family in the horror that was known as Endlosung, 'The Final Solution' of Hitler's Third Reich. Another was Pietro, a young Italian immigrant in search of a new life in a strange country far from the mountains of his childhood which harboured a deadly secret. And then there was the woman from Israel, the woman with a past so steeped in horror that no matter how far she ran, she would never escape the nightmare of Auschwitz or the massacre of Deir Yassin.'(Publication summary)