1873 boosted the district and captured the Southern Riverina markets for Melbourne. The rail line from Sydney reached Albury in 1881, but the first railway bridge over the Murray was not opened until 1883. The Bethanga-Talgarno gold and copper field became one of the top copper producers in Victoria although both minerals proved difficult to extract from the intractable ores. The alluvial field was first reported in 1852 and was visited by mining officials in 1854, but the field was not really opened up until the discovery of the New Year's Gift reef on 1 January 1876. This led to a number of highly capitalised mining ventures. Harris and Hollow, a mining partnership from Rutherglen, built a smelting works on the flats of lower Bethanga with a view to smelting copper for the public and opened the first furnace of their Great Eastern Copper Smelting works in January 1878. John Wallace MLC took an interest in the Bethanga mining scene and purchased mining leases and major mines at Bethanga, then built his own smelting works to treat the ore, completing three furnaces by June 1878. The Bethanga Goldfields Ltd company made a takeover in 1895 and both metals were mined and treated. Mining however, continued only sporadically into the 20th century, with further leads opened at Mt Corryong and Mt. Talgarno. There was a brief revival in the 1930s and some mines struggled on to at least 1945, but in the latter half of the 20th century mining ceased and the town gradually diminished (Bannear). The concept of damning Australian rivers for irrigation and flood mitigation was first investigated back in the days of the steamers. The Hume Dam was proposed under the River Murray Waters Agreement, which was signed on 9 September 1914, by the Prime Minister, Joseph Cook, and the Premiers of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The first sod was turned by His Excellency, the Right Honourable Sir Ronald Crawford Munro-Ferguson, Governor-General of Australia, on 28 November 1919. H. V. Beresford was construction engineer on the Hume Weir from about 1925, but died while still engaged on the project in 1927. At the height of construction, more than 1100 workers were employed at the site. These workers were housed in two fully serviced towns adjacent to the site, one on either side of the river. Construction of the weir took seventeen years with the reservoir