Avenue of Flags - Cooma, New South Wales, Australia - Flags of the World on Waymarking.com

** An impressive display of different countries flags, 38 in total, flying in Cooma, NSW, Australia **

Cooma is a small town in southern New South Wales high country. The Avenue of Flags is in Sharp Street, in the Centennial Park of Cooma. A long line of flag poles, individually named with each country, stands alongside the mosaic time walk.

The flags are actually located on two sides of the Park. Near Sharp Street are the twenty-eight original flags representing the home nations of the thousands of workers that traveled to Australia to work on the Snowy Scheme. These 28 flags show designs current during the 1940s and 1950s when the Scheme began, the American flag only has forty-nine stars and the Canadian flag includes the Union Jack. Along the Bombala Street side of the Park there is a smaller line of 10 flags that are the current designs that have superseded some of the original flags, making the total flag display around 38 flags currently flying.

Excerpt from Monument Australia.org.au website:
'The historical Avenue of Flags, which runs along Centennial Park, was erected in 1959 on the Snowy Mountain Scheme's 10th anniversary, in remembrance of the homelands of the workers involved in the construction of the scheme. It comprises flags from 28 nations which existed at that time, representing the first of 60,000 to 70,000 people from overseas who came to work on the Scheme between 1947-52'.

Construction of the Snowy Scheme was managed by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority, it officially began on 17 October 1949 and took 25 years, officially completed on 21 October 1972.

The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme is by far the largest engineering project ever undertaken in Australia. It is also one of the largest and most complex hydro-electric schemes in the world.

100,000 people from over 30 countries worked on the Scheme during the 25 years of construction. The work force reached its peak of 7,300 in 1959. Many of these workers from war torn countries remained in this country after the project was completed, setting up new lives and making a valuable contribution to Australia's modern multicultural society.
Countries from which workers came included: Austria, Finland, Jordan, Russia, USA, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, Estonia, France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Romania, Ukraine, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Croatia, South Africa, New Zealand.

These nations are remembered and represented by their flags flying high in Cooma's Avenue of Flags.

Visit Instructions:
Please share a self-made picture of the flags and tell us something about your visit.
Have the country flags changed? Is there a new one or is one missing?

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Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   01/28/2019 blingg visited it 12/31/2017 Grahame Cookie visited it 07/29/2017 Burkey Turkeys visited it 03/12/2017 Punga and Paua visited it

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