John (Jock) Adam
ADAM, John (Jock) ABalSM MAusIMM (c.1877 1955)
Jock was born at Amherst, near Clunes in Victoria, on October 31, 1877, the son of contractor John Adam and his wife Jane Adam, nee Ross. His father had migrated to Victoria from Scotland in 1852 and after prospecting for gold was involved in contracting including for the 19 mile Clunes to Maryborough railway, in 1874.
Jock studied at the Ballarat School of Mines from which he graduated in geology, mine surveying and metallurgy and obtained a mine manager’s certificate. He worked for a year at the Victoria United mine in Ballarat and then, in 1905, he joined Bewick Moreing and Company, mining consultants and mine managers worked at Loddon Valley Goldfields Ltd in the Talbot district of Victoria.
On January 3, 1906, he married Mabel Annie Crooks, at Ballarat, Victoria. They had seven children.
From 1907, he was a surveyor and draughtsman at the Great Fitzroy Mines Ltd at Mount Chalmers in Queensland for seven years.
Elected a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers in 1910, he was underground manager at the Sons of Gwalia Ltd (MMGF Leonora) in 1914 and was superintendent of Great Fingall Consolidated at Day Dawn (MGF) in 1916. He returned to the Sons of Gwalia to become superintendent in September 1916.
Source: WA State Library Call Number BA2362/202
He was chairman of the Leonora Malcolm Road Board and gave evidence to the Royal Commission on Mining in 1925. When he left Gwalia in 1927, he had been the longest serving manager of the mine. He moved to Broken Hill to become assistant superintendent of the Zinc Corporation, arguably the most important mining company managed by Bewick Moreing in Australia. He retired as the Zinc Corporation’s manager at Broken Hill in 1937 to take up farming near Wangaratta in Victoria.
On the death of Victor T. Edquist, the general manager of Bewick Moreing in Australia, in 1944, Jock returned to the company as acting general manager based in Melbourne, a position which he held until July 1947 when H.V. Rowe, previously the superintendent of the Sons of Gwalia, took over as Bewick Moreing’s senior representative in Australia. When Jock retired the second time he had worked for Bewick Moreing for a total of 35 years.
Jock died at Ashburton, Victoria, on April 9, 1955, aged 77 years. He was survived by his wife Annie.
Based on a biography in Westralian Founders of Twentieth Century Mining and augmented in November 2024 by Chris Fitzhardinge.
References:
LCER 1916;
JCMWA 1917, 1920;
Skinner 1914, 1920;
MCER May 1955;
ArcAusMM
West Australian, 13.8.1947, p17
Leonora Miner, 23.4.1927, p2
Denis A. Cumming and Richard G. Hartley, Westralian Founders of Twentieth Century Mining, 2014
