James Newman
NEWMAN, James Malcolm, CBE BESyd MAusIMM MIMM (1880-1973)
NEWMAN, JAMES MALCOLM, mining engineer, was born at Caboolture, Queensland, and educated at the Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Sydney. Upon graduation at the age of twenty, he worked in a succession of mines near Gympie, smelters at Newcastle and mines in Broken Hill as a miner, assayer and surveyor. In 1904 he went to the Peak Hill goldfield in Western Australia becoming in turn surveyor, geologist, mining engineer and then General Manager at a salary of a thousand pounds a year, before he was twenty-seven. In 1908 he was engaged firstly as consulting engineer and later as Senior Mine Engineer by the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Co. Ltd. During the next four years Malcolm Newman (as he was generally known) was involved in problems of underground mining methods. His paper on the "Geology of Mount Morgan and Area" in conjunction with G.F. Campbell Brown, was the authoritative work for many years. In 1912 Newman commenced practice as a consultant, visiting the Yodda goldfields in Papua and then the alluvial tin-fields of Malaya. There he saw the "promised land" and with his associates, the Pratten brothers, he prospected, developed and floated a number of highly successful tin-dredging companies. With F.G. Pratten he formed, in 1923, Alluvial Tin (Malaya) Ltd with a capital of 20,000 pounds. In 1927 this company and its associates were sold to a London group for 750,000 pounds. His prospecting activities in this period also extended ·into Thailand, Burma and Borneo.
In Australia Newman's love of the land and cattle was· the basis for his interest in properties in the Northern Territory, notably at the vast station of Anthony's Lagoon, and in Queensland .where he had a prime stud of Aberdeen Angus. He was a strong proponent of the use of fertilizers to improve pastures and personally converted much low-grade country in the Queensland coastal area into good grazing land. At heart he was always a bush cocky".
In the early 1930s, again with Pratten interests, Newman became involved in alluvial gold-prospecting in New Zealand, erecting large dredges on the west coast of the South Island. Later in the same decade he turned his attention to the alluvial-tin deposits in the Cairns hinterland and successfully promoted Tableland Tin Dredging N.L. whose successor forty years later is still mining in the same locality.
In World War II Ginger Newman ("Ginger" because of his red hair) was Controller of Minerals Production for the Commonwealth Government, waiving the proffered salary and accepting only reimbursement of expenses. He directed the effort to develop the production of minerals and metals for the Australian war effort and to supplement supplies of strategic materials for the entire Allied programme. For this work and for his contributions to the Australian mineral industry he was awarded the CBE in 1957. In 1939 Newman had become a director of Mount Morgan Ltd, the successor to the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Co. Ltd, and in 1949 he became its Chairman, serving until his retirement in 1962 at the age of eighty-two. During his period as a director and Chairman he spent much time in promoting the use of Mount Morgan pyrite for the manufacture of sulphuric acid and fertilizers.
Newman was always interested in mining education; in his early days he sat on the Board of the Mount Morgan Technical College and in the late 1940s he was one of the principal instigators of the mining engineering school of the University of Queensland.
In 1961 Malcolm Newman was presented with the medal of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. The citation read: In recognition of his long service to the mineral industries, in particular gold and copper mining in Western Australia, Queensland and New Zealand and tin mining in Malaya and Australia, and for his national service in many fields of primary industry.
He was a product of Queensland and Mount Morgan who did much for the State and the great mine. Newman died on 23 November 1973; he was twice married and was survived by two daughters and six sons.
References:
Eminent Queensland Engineers Vol 1 is available here.
'Who's Who In Australia' (Melb, 1950), p. 535;
S. Tutt, 'Caboolture Country' (Caboolture, 1973);
Pamphlet, Australas. Inst. Min. Metall., July 1961;
John Kerr, 'Mount Morgan: Gold Copper and Oil' (Brlsb, 1982);
Personal recollections and family reminiscences.
