STOREFRONT - Key Persons
Charles Yelverton O'Connor, the brilliant engineer who designed and built the Fremantle Harbour and the Goldfields Pipeline, and who vastly developed and successfully managed the West Australian railway system. Eventually the value of O'Connor's work was recognised and a statue by Pietro Porcelli was erected near the Fremantle harbour in 1912.
Job Titles:
- Great West Australian Engineer
A refugee from the Irish potato famine, he was born in Castletown, County Meath, in Ireland in January 1843. He trained as a surveyor with the local railway company, and was very good at what he did. Charles Yelverton O'Connor left Ireland forever at the age of twenty one and set off for New Zealand, where he quickly found employment with the government - first in a surveying team on the North Island, and then as Assistant Engineer in the province of Canterbury on the South Island.
His work was on the wild and rugged west coast of New Zealand's South Island, where he built water supply solutions for the mines. He loved the work, and would work long hours in some pretty tough conditions. When he built a road over the Southern Alps, not only was he working in some very steep and rugged territory, but the rainfall was phenomenal - 120 inches or about 3 metres per year! But the road got built! He was at this stage in his mid twenties.
Harbours feature in his work. He had to prevent some harbours on the west coast of New Zealand from silting up. He achieved this by building massive breakwaters to protect them from the seas coming in from the west. The ports of Westport and Greymouth were developed by him.
By 1883 he had been appointed New Zealand's under-secretary for public works. But this was desk job, and it bored and frustrated him. So when the Premier of Western Australia, John Forrest, wrote to him and asked him to become Chief Engineer for the colony, he was ready. After some argy bargy about the salary, CY O'Connor left New Zealand in 1891, with his family. The New Zealand government did not even pay him all of the retirement allowance that he was due after twenty five years of service!
John Forrest, like all good leaders, knew that when he needed someone to do a job he needed to get the best, and that he had to be prepared to pay him well. He paid - the West Australian Government, actually - O'Connor 1200 pounds per year. The best the Kiwis could offer him was 750 pounds per year! But Forrest had found his man and his man made a profound difference to the future of Western Australia.
O'Connor's influence on Western Australia lies in three main area - railways, harbours, and water. He showed his power for independent thinking, and the courage to follow up on his beliefs, in all three.
Providing a safe, all weather harbour for the capital of Perth was his first job. He proposed an inner harbour in the mouth of the Swan River. There was a great reef in the entrance that was a problem. The prevailing ‘expert opinion' also reckoned that sand movement in the area would cause such a harbour to silt up quickly. But he did his homework and found that such sand movements were not the problem that they had been made out to be, and that the reef could be blasted out. He proposed two breakwaters to protect the harbour from the seas.
If John Forrest needed O'Connor, so O'Connor needed Forrest. He presented the WA Government with detailed and costed plans for the new Fremantle harbour. It needed a man of the stature of Forrest to get it through Parliament and to get the funding organised. It took five years to get the job done - a pretty amazing accomplishment, given the very limited machinery available in those days! Construction started in 1892 and was finished in 1897.
That same Fremantle Harbour is still in use today, 121 years later, though it has had an extension or two since then. The critics were wrong, the harbour hasn't silted up, and Fremantle is the major port in Western Australia. He was awarded the Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George for this job. This award showed the value of his work, as it was recognised internationally. It didn't stop the critics, though, as we shall see!
Henry Lawson (17 June 1867 - 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer". He was the son of the poet, publisher and feminist Louisa Lawson.
Henry Lawson was born in a town on the Grenfell goldfields of New South Wales. His father was Niels Herzberg Lawson, a Norwegian-born miner who went to sea at 21 and arrived in Melbourne in 1855 to join the gold rush, along with partner William Henry John Slee. Lawson's parents met at the goldfields of Pipeclay (now Eurunderee New South Wales), Niels and Louisa Albury (1848-1920) married on 7 July 1866; he was 32 and she, 18. On Henry's birth, the family surname was Anglicised and Niels became Peter Lawson. The newly-married couple were to have an unhappy marriage.
Louisa, after family-raising, took a significant part in women's movements, and edited a women's paper called Dawn (published May 1888 to July 1905). She also published her son's first volume, and around 1904 brought out a volume of her own, Dert and Do, a simple story of 18,000 words. In 1905 she collected and published her own verses, The Lonely Crossing and other Poems. Louisa likely had a strong influence on her son's literary work in its earliest days. Peter Lawson's grave (with headstone) is in the little private cemetery at Hartley Vale, New South Wales, a few minutes' walk behind what was Collitt's Inn.
Henry Lawson attended school at Eurunderee from 2 October 1876 but suffered an ear infection at around this time. It left him with partial deafness and by the age of fourteen he had lost his hearing entirely. However, his master John Tierney was kind and did all he could for Lawson who was quite shy. Lawson later attended a Catholic school at Mudgee, New South Wales around 8 kilometres away; the master there, Mr. Kevan, would teach Lawson about poetry. Lawson was a keen reader of Dickens and Marryat and novels such as Robbery under Arms and For the Term of his Natural Life; an aunt had also given him a volume by Bret Harte. Reading became a major source of his education because, due to his deafness, he had trouble learning in the classroom.
In 1883, after working on building jobs with his father in the Blue Mountains, Lawson joined his mother in Sydney at her request. Louisa was then living with Henry's sister and brother. At this time, Lawson was working during the day and studying at night for his matriculation in the hopes of receiving a university education. However, he failed his exams. At around 20 years of age Lawson went to the eye and ear hospital in Melbourne but nothing could be done for his deafness.
In 1896, Lawson married Bertha Bredt Jr., daughter of Bertha Bredt, the prominent socialist. The marriage was ill-advised due to Lawson's alcohol addiction. They had two children, son Jim (Joseph) and daughter Bertha. However, the marriage ended very unhappily
In 1903 he bought a room at Mrs Issabella Bryers' Coffee Palace in North Sydney. This marked the beginning of a 20 year friendship between Mrs Bryers and Lawson. Despite his position as the most celebrated Australian writer of the time, Lawson was deeply depressed and perpetually poor. He lacked money due to unfortunate royalty deals with publishers. His ex-wife repeatedly reported him for non-payment of child maintenance, resulting in gaol terms. He was gaoled at Darlinghurst Gaol for drunkenness and non-payment of alimony, and recorded his experience in the haunting poem One Hundred and Three - his prison number - which was published in 1908. He refers to the prison as "Starvinghurst Gaol" because of the meagre rations given to the inmates.
At this time, Lawson became withdrawn, alcoholic, and unable to carry on the usual routine of life.
Mrs Bryers (née Ward) was an excellent poet herself and although of modest education, had been writing vivid poetry since her teens in a similar style to Lawson's. Long separated from her husband and elderly, Mrs Bryers was, at the time she met Lawson, a woman of independent means looking forward to retirement. Bryers regarded Lawson as Australia's greatest living poet, and hoped to sustain him well enough to keep him writing. She negotiated on his behalf with publishers, helped to arrange contact with his children, contacted friends and supporters to help him financially, and assisted and nursed him through his mental and alcohol problems. She wrote countless letters on his behalf and knocked on any doors that could provide Henry with financial assistance or a publishing deal.
It was in Mrs Isabella Bryers' home that Henry Lawson died, of cerebral hemorrhage, in Abbotsford, Sydney in 1922. He was given a state funeral. His death registration on the NSW Births, Deaths & Marriages index is ref.10451/1922 and was recorded at the Petersham Registration District. It shows his parents as Peter and Louisa. His funeral was attended by the Prime Minister W. M. Hughes and the Premier of New South Wales Jack Lang (who was the husband of Lawson's sister-in-law Hilda Bredt), as well as thousands of citizens. He is interred at Waverley Cemetery. Lawson was the first person to be granted a New South Wales state funeral (traditionally reserved for Governors, Chief Justices, etc) on the grounds of having been a ‘distinguished citizen'