Edwin Beaumont
BEAUMONT, Edwin Kerby, BCE MIMechE MAusIME (1869-1948)
Born at Castlemaine in Victoria where his father Amos Thomas Beaumont had been an early digger on the Forest Creek field, Beaumont was educated at Castlemaine Grammar School and Melbourne University from which he graduated with a degree in civil engineering. He worked as a surveyor in the Department of Lands, Mining and Survey, and then in the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, for which he surveyed, designed, and supervised the construction of a sewerage reticulation scheme to serve the City of Carlton in 1894-1896.
In 1896 Beaumont joined the staff of the Sulphide Corporation’s Central Mine at Broken Hill where he gained his mine manager's certificate in 1901, and was appointed underground manager of the mine in 1904. Shortly afterwards, he moved to Western Australia to join Bewick Moreing and Company, for whom he worked as engineer and surveyor at the Oroya Brownhill Company mine (ECGF, Boulder) until 1907, when he joined the Department of Mines as Inspector of Mines on the Mount Margaret Goldfield.
In 1910 Beaumont was working as a consultant mining engineer with an office in Perth, and later also one in Kalgoorlie. He was the local manager and representative of Unbehaun & Johnston and of Hoskins & Company between 1910 and 1925.
He was chief draughtsman in the drawing office of the Western Australian section of the Trans Australian Railway during its construction in 1915, and was manager of the Electric Supply Company in 1920. Beaumont was also chief instructor in engineering for Stott's Business and Technical College. Beaumont moved to South Australia to become the District Engineer for the West Torrens Council, from 1926 to 1928. He died in April 1948, in Melbourne.
Beaumont was elected a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers in 1899 and was returned as a member of the Kalgoorlie Municipal Council in 1912. His published papers include Silver lead ore mining and various systems of stoping and timbering employed in Broken Hill NSW, TAusIME 9 1 (1903), pp. 117-44.
References:
Clark p.361;
GG 1907, p.1757;
RDM 1908;
Battye 2, pp.884 5;
WArg 10 Feb.1920;
MCER Nov 1939;
ArcAusMM;
MIN ‘RRC Ventilation and Sanitation of Mines' V&P WA 1905, 6;
CWA 2, pp884 5;
WAPD 1910; 1925 p 693;
ArcMM.
