Australia's savage drought has sucked dry a huge reservoir and revealed the ghostly remains of a town which was flooded 50 years ago.
Adaminaby, a small farming town nestled in the Snowy Mountains between New South Wales and Victoria, was evacuated and flooded in 1957 to make way for a massive hydro-electricity project.
But the longest "big dry" in a century - widely blamed on climate change - has reduced man-made Lake Eucumbene to a tenth of its normal size, exposing the town's muddy outline to the elements.
The blackened skeletons of trees poke out of the water, still marking the route of a road they once lined in the old town.
The sloping main street, its bitumen cracked and eroded from decades underwater, is now being used by locals as a boat ramp to access the dwindling lake.
The re-emergence of Old Adaminaby, as it is now known, has stirred painful memories for its former inhabitants.
"We couldn't believe it when the old streets started to reappear," said Leigh Stewart, a local history buff who grew up in the old town and once ran a shop there.
The town's re-emergence was a striking demonstration of the severity of the drought," Mr Stewart said. "It shows how bad the situation is around here.
"The dam's at about 20 per cent capacity now and it's getting worse. We're all hoping it turns around soon and we get some consistent rains that will fill the lake again."
Shards of pottery, bottles, bits of farming machinery and other remnants of everyday life now bake in the sun.
Local authorities have slapped a conservation order on the site to stop people pilfering heritage items.
Some former inhabitants now hope the ruins of the old town will become a tourist attraction.
"Who knows?" said Mrs Kennedy. "At least it would mean something good came from all of this." The drought is expected to wipe one percent from Australia's £400 billion economy. Recent rainfall has brought some hope, but it is still too early to tell if the dry spell is about to come to an end.
"I'm a little bit optimistic about the breaking weather patterns," said Wendy Craik, the head of the Murray-Darling Basin irrigation area, an area the size of France and Spain. "But gee, we need a lot more rain."
More images after jump.
Source: Telegraph
Tags: Remains | Town | Adaminaby
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