A modern photo of showing the inside of the power station. Picture: Sgt Marshall
Offbeat by Peter Carruthers
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Subscriber only LEFT abandoned and forgotten in the darkness at the bottom of the Barron Falls gorge is a seldom seen but permanent reminder of a successful engineering marvel built in defiance of huge torrents and near-vertical terrain. The underground hydro power station was a Queensland first when it opened in 1935 after three years of arduous work, but was first mooted 30 years earlier. Residences and a mess hall on the eastern side of the river, some of which still remain, housed up to 100 workers who were charged with the mammoth task of digging a control room into the side of the mountain and a pipeline from diversion dams at the top of the falls to turbines housed underground.