Thargomindah Hydro Power Museum

Thargomindah Hydro Power Plant

The first Hydro Power Plant in Australia, the third in the world. Today you can still the continuation of this passion with a huge infrastructure of solar panels everywhere. The artesian Hydro originally powered Street lights and then public places. Today there is a large amount of solar pathway lighting.

As part of the show, water is run to the pelton wheel and it all still turns the generator after decades of operation.

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The artesian water bore on this site was established on the 9th designed to show the of September 1893. This building and exhibition have been sources of energy used in the Bulloo Shire.

Thargomindah was the first town in Australia to produce hydro-electric power for street lighting.

Thargomindah's local sawmill owner, Mr Paterson, is thought to have owned the town's first electric lighting plant. By 1898, Paterson's plant was purchased by the Bulloo Divisional Board, and the pressure from the bore water was used to power the plant. It was Queensland's first municipally owned electric plant and continued to operate until it was replaced in 1951 with a generator driven by a diesel engine..

The power was carried to town by overhead wires, which were a breach of the Electric Light and Power Act of Qld (1896). due to the potential danger if they broke and fell. In 1898, Government Electrician John Hesketh reported to Cabinet that the "scheme would not be commercially viable if overhead conductors were not approved". This was accepted, and passed by Cabinet on 24 January 1899.Read more