From left to right: Professor Eric Rudd, Barbara Wing (daughter of Dan Moye), Doug Price and Charles Halton, at the unveling of the plaque at Tumut Pond Dam.

The plaque was unveiled by Doug Price who in his early SMA days was Dan Moye’s assistant. He was the resident engineer at Tumut Pond during the construction of the dam, and then between 1970 and 1988 held the positions of assistant director and managing director of SMEC.

Other speakers were David Stapledon, a former senior geologist on the scheme, and Ken Sharp, resident geologist at Tumut Pond during the investigation and construction of the dam, and later chief geologist of-SMA and SMEC.

The final speaker was Charles Halton the present Commissioner of SMA.

The ceremony concluded with words of thanks by Dan Moye's daughter, Barbara Wing.

Dan Moye played a major role in introducing many of the concepts and techniques of engineering geology which we now take for granted. He placed great emphasis on clearly differentiating between geological facts and interpretations, and was always striving for improved presentation of geological data such as better core logs and standards for defining degrees of weathering.

The SMA was fortunate in that the associate commissioner in charge of civil engineering, Tom Lang, strongly supported all forms of scientific endeavour, not only engineering geology, in the development of the Scheme.

There was constant pressure on drillers and equipment manufacturers to improve core recovery which resulted in the introduction of triple tube core-barrels as standard equipment in Australia, well before the rest of the world.

Rock bolting was developed from the primitive split pin and wedge type anchorages as used in the coal fields, which were only suitable for temporary support, to those with sophisticated shell anchorages and hollow cores which could be fully grouted and could be relied on for permanent support. In situ rock stress measurements were carried out as part of the design of the caverns for the underground power stations.

In collaboration with Professor John Jaeger and the Australian National University, a network of seismometers was set up around the scheme to record and locate the many seismic events which affect the area. Terrestrial heat flow studies were also carried by ANU, with the assistance of SMA, partly as fundamental research, but also to predict rock temperatures in the very deep tunnels which were proposed in early concepts of the scheme.

The conceptual studies for the scheme included geological mapping by the NSW Geological Survey and BMR, and Dan Moye encouraged the Geological Survey to continue their work with systematic regional reconnaissance mapping of the Snowy Scheme. As a result some of the first published 1:250 000 geological sheets were of the Snowy area.

Dan Moye was also called on to advise on many projects outside the scheme. One of the most notable of these was his visit to the Mekong River in 1959, which led to SMA geologists and engineers being involved with the Colombo Plan and the investigation of a number of major hydro-electric projects in South-East Asia. Several of these have been constructed, and one is currently under construction.

It is fitting that Dan Moye be remembered for his many contributions to the development of engineering geology in Australia.

Kenneth R. Sharp, in Bull.AusIMM. No 4, 1993