Graeme Campbell Reynolds
REYNOLDS, Graeme Campbell, ME MIEAust AMIStructE (1930-2023)
Graeme was born in Melbourne on 10 November 1930, the elder of two sons of Harry Campbell Reynolds (a pharmacist) and his wife Catherine Edith (nee Proud). When Graeme was six years old, the family moved to Murray Bridge in South Australia, where he attended Primary School. Both Harry and Catherine were active in leading and organising the kinds of community-building activities that keep Australian rural towns alive, including initiatives like founding the Murray Bridge Golf club and chairing the hospital board of management. Graeme inherited their organisational and leadership skills, together with his father’s dedication to fishing, a hobby that he pursued avidly for the rest of his life.
At age 11, Graeme became a boarder at St Peter’s College in Adelaide. He excelled academically (especially in mathematics and economics) and as a rower and rugby player, winning the Varley Scholarship in 1947 and completing his Leaving Certificate in 1948 as Dux of the College.
He enrolled in Civil Engineering at the University of Adelaide. In addition, he studied surveying at the Adelaide School of Mines. In 1950 and 1951 he won University of Adelaide Annual Scholarships, tenable at St Mark’s Residential College. Living at the college saw the beginning of his long-lasting connection with Western Australia, through the many enduring friendships he made with several fellow students from Perth (including Physiotherapy student Jane Taylor, who was later to become his wife). He became a member of numerous rowing crews that won championships at College and South Australian State levels, and was a member of the winning University of Adelaide Rugby team (photo).
After graduating from the University of Adelaide in 1953, he obtained a position for a few years with South Australian Railways, where he developed his passion for Bridge Engineering. He worked for the Cement and Concrete Association in London where he gradually became drawn to academia, completing a Master of Engineering at the University of Adelaide in 1958 with a thesis on the strength of concrete type grillage bridges. In 1959, he commenced his academic career as Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the University of Tasmania.
During his tenure there and again later in his academic life he undertook sabbaticals with the Cement and Concrete Association (C&CA) in England, which led to his contribution for many years to research on Concrete Structures and the development and continuing refinement of the Concrete Structures Code of Practice.
Graeme’s lifelong connection with Western Australia had formed when he became engaged to physiotherapist Christobel Jane Taylor in Perth in December 1953. They married in 1955 and returned through Perth from the UK in 1957. They had three sons, Peter Campbell, Ian Campbell and Timothy Campbell.
In 1962 he was recruited to The University of Western Australia during a time of considerable expansion of the University, joining the Department of Civil Engineering as a Lecturer. During the next 34 years he was promoted to Senior Lecturer, then Head of Department of Civil Engineering. He gradually became more involved in University governance.
He served as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and oversaw the development of combined commerce-engineering and science-engineering degrees. For the first time, students had a relatively wide choice in their studies. The combined degrees, particularly the science-engineering degree, attracted a much greater proportion of high-performing students to the faculty, and a much greater number of students overall. The commerce-engineering degree attracted a large number of foreign students from South East Asia. For the first time, engineering had become the preferred choice over medicine for the highest performing students entering the university.
Later, as the position of Dean was transformed from merely chairing occasional meetings of the academic staff in the faculty to one of financial authority and responsibility, Graeme became Head of the new Division of Engineering. As the University was restructured again into a smaller number of faculties, he oversaw the integration of the Schools of Mathematics and Computer Science and Software Engineering into the new, very large Faculty of Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. As Executive Dean of this Faculty he served on the University’s small executive leadership group, a position which he held until his retirement in 1996.
He was always deeply committed to excellence in teaching and research and he became an outstanding facilitator and enabler of key research groups such as the Centre for Water Research, the Centre for Geomechanics, and the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems.
His skills in financial management were legendary and his contributions encouraging women to join the profession were widely acknowledged. When he retired in 1996, the letter of appreciation he received from the then Vice-Chancellor (Professor Fay Gale AO) made particular mention of his statesmanship and to the strength of his “vision, loyalty and academic mission”.
Graeme joined the Institution of Engineers Australia in 1952 as a Student Member, becoming a full Member in 1958. He was also an Associate member of the Institution of Structural Engineers.
At a personal level, Graeme married Jane (nee Taylor) in Perth in January1955 and remained happily married until her untimely death in 1981. They had three sons, Peter Campbell, Ian Campbell and Timothy Campbell, two of whom (Peter and Tim) became engineers. In 1985 he married Lesley Parker (nee Paterson) acquiring four stepsons (Ian, Geoffrey, Christopher and David Parker, one of whom (Geoffrey) also became an engineer. Graeme died on 22 June 2023 aged 92, survived and mourned by Lesley, his three sons, four stepsons, and 19 grandchildren, together with their partners and growing families, including six great-grandchildren.
References:
Margaret A Sacks (editor), The WAY 79 Who is Who, Crawley Publishers, Nedlands, 1980
Chris Fitzhardinge, Lesley Parker, Tim Reynolds, Peter Reynolds, James Trevelyan
