Thomas Hodgson
HODGSON, Thomas Cowley, MSc(Civil Eng) (1858 - 1939)
Thomas Hodgson was born at Dunolly in northern Victoria on June 5, 1858, the son of farmer John Hodgson and his wife Catherine Hodgson nee Roper. The family had migrated to Victoria in the 1850’s and ultimately comprised ten children.
Hodgson undertook secondary education at Grenville College and the School of Mines both located at Ballarat, matriculating in 1878. He was regarded as a very promising student having won the Grenville College mathematical exhibition. He then studied at Melbourne University and was one of the first four to graduate with a Masters Degree in Civil Engineering in 1886.
During his university study, in 1881, he married Millicent (Mollie) Serena Gibson. They had two children, Norman born in September 1883 at Windsor, Melbourne and Gladys born in 1887 at Numurkah.
In 1887, Hodgson was appointed as Secretary of the Numurkah Shire and later that year, as Coburg Shire Engineer. He also became a member of the Victorian Institute of Surveyors in December 1887, On October 5, 1888, he qualified as an “Engineer of Water Supply” under the Victorian Irrigation Act of 1886.
In 1888, Hodgson formed a partnership with Melbourne University lecturer, Bernhard Alexander Smith, consulting in civil and hydraulic engineering. B A Smith would go on to become President of the Institution of Engineers, Australia in 1928.
The partnership was immediately successful with consulting arrangements with 14 water trusts and local governments as well as work on railways and electrical projects. One of the consultancies relevant to his later work in Western Australia was the Formby water supply scheme in Tasmania involving a pumping lift of over 400 feet, similar to the lift from Mundaring Weir to No 2 Pumping Station.
C Y O’Connor recruited Hodgson as a senior member of the Public Works Department on an annual salary of £600. Hodgson arrived in Albany in March 1895 to take up the role of Engineer in Charge of Roads and Bridges, Harbours and Rivers, Sewerage and Water Supply. By May 1895, Hodgson was working on a survey for the Perth Sewerage Scheme. By August of that year Hodgson was surveying suitable dam sites for the Coolgardie water supply in the Darling Scarp. Hodgson was regarded as an able and trusted colleague by C Y O’Connor.
By December 1896, a proposal for the Coolgardie Water Supply based on a storage on the Helena River and a series of pumping stations was sent to London for review by a Commission of eminent engineers, John Carruthers, Professor William Unwin and George F Deacon. The commissioners endorsed the scheme and provided a design for the pipe size and the number, location and power of the pumping stations. Hodgson challenged the design on technical grounds and subsequently Hodgson’s designs were accepted with a larger pipe size and more powerful pumps.
The Northam to Southern Cross railway line had been completed in 1894. By 1895 only one quarter of the land in the Meckering Agricultural District had been taken up and there was no town of any size between Meckering and Southern Cross. Hodgson with fellow engineer Alan Currie, the son of a wealthy Victorian pastoralist, specifically sought out land adjoining the Cunderdin Railway Dam and land near the Cunderdin Railway Station. On July 16, 1896, the Coolgardie Water Supply Loan Bill was introduced into the Western Australian Parliament and passed into legislation in September 1896.
In 1896 Hodgson started to acquire land with Alan Currie at Greenhills and Cunderdin. As public servants their land dealings required Executive Council approval. They made many applications which did not meet the statutory requirements or concessional requirements for allocation of the land. Hodgson, in partnership with others (including Alan Currie) and with his wife eventually held 40,000 acres of freehold, conditional purchase and leasehold land. His dealings with this land and the subcontractors would later lead to his resignation and bankruptcy proceedings.
Hodgson commenced work on investigation and design of Canning Dam in 1897 and identified the site where the dam was subsequently built in the 1930’s.
In 1897, Hodgson also supervised an extensive water boring program involving Bunbury, Geraldton, Onslow, Wyndham, Tammin Northam, Subiaco and Guildford.
The death of Alan Currie’s father in March 1898 had a major impact on Hodgson as his well-resourced and capable business partner returned to Victoria. Hodgson may not have had to resort to borrowing money from the Coolgardie Scheme subcontractor, James Couston, or having to be involved in land dealings with James Finlayson and James Couston had Alan Currie remained in Western Australia.
Work commenced on Mundaring Weir in April 1898 and Hodgson moved with his young family to a camp at Mundaring townsite. That month there were 50 men working on constructing a temporary upstream diversion dam and exposing the foundations of the weir. Hodgson being located at Mundaring facilitated the myriad of decisions such as resolving land access and those decisions that were needed for the construction of the weir, the first two pump stations and the section of pipeline to Northam.
By July 1898 with the Coolgardie Water Supply Scheme placing more demands on Hodgson’s time his duties were pared to Engineer Town Water Supply and Sewerage and Engineer for Coolgardie Water Supply Scheme.
In October 1898, a major step forward was made on the Coolgardie Goldfields Water Supply Scheme with locking bar being chosen. Mephan Ferguson and G & C Hoskins were to each fabricate 30,928 pipes in Western Australia from imported steel.
In August 1899, the first pipe had been fabricated at Midland Junction, by G & C Hoskins and tested to 400 lbs per square inch pressure.
In November 1900, the State Government accepted a tender of £7,500, from Couston and Finlayson, for the supply of 12 caulking machines and 12 hydraulic locking bar caulking tools. Hodgson had been involved in negotiating this sole supplier contract whilst borrowing money from James Couston. The same month, C Y O’Connor reported that over half of the pipes needed for the project had been fabricated and were being produced at a mile a day, 154 miles of pipeline had been distributed, 149 miles of trench excavated and a third of the masonry in the Mundaring Weir wall placed.
In February 1902, a Royal Commission was called to inquire into the conduct and completion of the Coolgardie Water Supply Scheme in response to parliamentary and media attacks on the scheme. Hodgson was implicated through his land dealings at Cunderdin and through borrowing money from the contractors, Finlayson and Couston. C Y O’Connor was reported to be in a high state of anxiety with the combination of an antagonistic public process and the commissioning of the scheme.
By March 1902, Hodgson was able to report the successful pressure testing of 7 miles of pipeline, in the vicinity of Chidlows Well, to C Y O’Connor. This was a major step forward in the construction of the pipeline but was not enough to stop C Y O’Connor taking his life that month.
The outcome of the Royal Commission resulted in Hodgson resigning from the PWD in August 1902 and taking up farming near Cunderdin.
He undertook minor engineering and survey works in addition to farming. In 1912 he supervised the construction of the, privately owned, 200 foot long, 18 foot high Toapin Weir near Dangin.
In April 1922 he became Secretary of the Meckering Road Board, a position he held for 9 years.
He died on May 16, 1939, aged 81 years at Shenton Park.
References:
P W H Thiel and Co, Twentieth Century Impressions of Western Australia, Perth, 1901.
R G Hartley, River of Steel, Access Press, Bassendean, 2007.
J S Battye, Cyclopedia of Western Australia, Volume 2, Adelaide, 1913.
R W G Evans, Thomas Cowley Hodgson – His Life, Unpublished Paper, 2007.
Merab Tauman, The Chief – C Y O’Connor, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1978.
A G Evans, C Y O’Connor His Life and Legacy, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 2001.
Inquirer and Commercial News, 29.7.1898, p. 7.
West Australian, 17.11.1900, p. 5.
Western Mail, 24.11.1900, p. 68.
West Australian, 11.9.1935, p. 10.
Eastern Recorder, 30.6.1939, p. 8.
