A Hole in the Heart of the Mountain

By the end of 1969 two huge steel arteries over 100 miles long were scheduled to begin pumping electric power from Manapouri to Bluff. A new 27-mile road had to be built into Fiordland to bring the pylons in to carry the power. At Deep Cove in 1967, 500 people were living in the wilderness - many on board the ocean liner Wanganella moored in the fiord. This is a record of the work and lives of many of those people, including the tunnellers, the steel workers, the road builders, the unionists, the policemen and the nurses aboard the Wanganella.