Charlie Salvestro helped to build the project that defined Cooma, but now he doesn't know where the town is going.
"Fifty years ago, here was a boom town, this was the best town in Australia," he said in the lilting accent that has stayed with him in the 65 years since he left Italy.
"You had a coffee lounge, you had restaurants, you had French, Yugoslavian, Italian restaurants, and the nightlife… People used to come from Canberra or Queanbeyan for the nightlife here."
Like many in Cooma, the 78-year-old former carpenter worked on Australia's most iconic infrastructure project, the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
Smiles crinkle his weather-worn cheeks as he tells how he trudged through metre-deep snow in moccasin shoes every day to ask for a job at Guthega – "I said 18, I lied, I was 16," he said, eyes sparkling.
His ears still ring from his couple of ventures into the tunnels – "No ear muffs, only a bit of cotton wool and after a while the cotton wool falls out and for weeks and weeks and weeks your ears ring," he said – but he also remembers the comradeship.
"All different nationalities and they all worked together good. No hassles, the only fights that happened were with the Aussies. The Germans, the Russians, the Polish all worked together. You didn't think so with the war. Especially the Poles. They were in the middle, they were attacked by Russia and Germany. Here they worked together as if nothing happened," he said.
As Eden-Monaro prepares to cast its vote on July 2, Mr Salvestro would like Australia's politicians to be more like the men that worked on the Snowy Scheme, who put aside their differences to help make Australia great.
His frustrations are echoed by many people Fairfax Media spoke to on an 800-kilometre road trip around the bellwether seat.
"When I see them on the television, all they do is bag each other. Instead of bagging each other, work out a way to make the country better," Mr Salvestro said.
While many workers flooded out of Cooma once the work dried up, Mr Salvestro stayed.
He raised his sons in the town with his wife Sue, built a successful business – "We finally got him to retire at the age of 75," Mrs Salvestro said fondly - and still lives in the home his parents did.
Memorabilia and newspaper clippings from his time working on the Snowy Scheme dot the walls and he would love to see the town prosper once again, like the old days.
"At the moment we haven't got anything and this place should be kept going. It's an important spot in NSW," Mr Salvestro said.
"I don't care much about politics but this is my home. Even though you're born over there and you have an accent, you are more Australian than you think you are."
