John Lewis
Lewis, John Gordon, BEHons MScEng DIC FIEAUST (1925−2022)
John Lewis was born in London on February 23, 1925, the son of deck officer, Cyril Wynniatt Adams Lewis and his wife, nursing sister, Winfred Annie Lewis. The family migrated to Western Australia arriving on the P&O ship “Oronsay” in 1927. Initially the family moved to Cowaramup where they spent 7 years developing a 160 acre virgin block into a dairy farm. In 1935 the family moved to Quairading where Cyril opened a general agency business and was Secretary of the Quairading Agricultural Society.
Whilst at Cowaramup, John had his initial primary school education by correspondence and then with the move to Quairading, he attended the Quairading Primary School. In 1938 he received a scholarship to Perth Modern School but did not complete his secondary education at Perth Modern School, leaving in 1941 to join the Public Works Department as a cadet. He studied at night to matriculate before entering the University of WA in 1945, graduating in 1948 with First Class Honours in Civil Engineering. He won a University of WA Maude Gledden Fellowship in 1950 and did post graduate engineering study at Imperial College, London, specialising in earth and rockfill dams and hydraulic structures. He studied various dams and hydroelectric power plants in USA for three months in 1952 during his Fellowship.
John returned to Perth in 1954 to take up his appointment again with the Public Works Department of WA and then studied at the University of Western Australia.
During his sixteen years as an engineer with the PWD he led design teams on four large earth dams and three major concrete ones. They included:
- Raising Mundaring Weir by 10 metres
- Raising Wellington Dam by 15 metres
- Logue Brook Dam [45 m high]
- Waroona Dam [39 m high]
- Ord River Diversion Dam
- Fitzroy River Weir
- Ord Main Dam and Spillway – site location, conceptual design
- Planning and Layout of the Ord River Area including Kununurra Township
John was responsible for setting up the PWD’s Engineering Research Station which provided a special knowledge of hydraulic models, coastal erosion, engineering properties of soils and foundations, corrosion protection and durability of soils. In 1960 John visited India and Pakistan studying problems of flood and sediment control, subsequently submitting a report to the IEAUST on those subjects. In 1961 he attended the Congress on Large Dams in Rome, the Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering in Paris and represented Australia at the International Irrigation and Drainage Commission meeting in Moscow. He then studied various large works in the central States of Soviet Russia.
John resigned from the PWD in 1964 to join an engineering consulting practice concerned with water supply, railway and port structures for the developing mining industry.
Around 1952 he married teacher, Julie Marian Heath, and they had three children Sue, Geoff and Don.
John Lewis died peacefully on 8 January 2022, aged 96 years.
References:
John Le Page, Building a State, Water Authority of Western Australia, Leederville, 1986
West Australian, 7.9.1940, p. 14
West Australian Obituaries, 23.1.2023, p. 37.
Margaret Sacks editor, The WAY 79 Who is Who, Crawley Publishers, Nedlands, 1980
Geoff Lewis, Memoirs of John Gordon Lewis (23 February 1925 - 8 January 2022)
Doug Ayre, Oral History Transcript
