Kenneth George Bott
BOTT, Kenneth George, BE FIEAust FRAPI (1914-1998)
Kenneth was born on July 26, 1914, at Nerina on the corner of Hyde Street and Raglan Road, North Perth, the only son of draftsman Bruce George Bott and his wife Eunice Rewell Bott (nee Bowra).
His primary schooling was at Highgate State School before winning a secondary scholarship to Perth Modern School in 1926. He completed his Leaving Certificate in 1931 at Perth Modern School. In 1932 he commenced a five-year engineering course at the University of Western Australia.
In late March and early April 1932, he was part of a group of students, mostly engineers, that assisted with the installation of the cement mortared waste stone walls and waste stone floor sealed with cement mortar in the Winthrop Hall Reflection Pond. The mortar was still wet when the pond was filled for the opening on April 13.
He completed a Degree in Civil Engineering, graduating in April 1937. During his study he had worked as an Engineering Assistant on the construction of Canning Dam, between 1932 and 1935.
Following his graduation, he worked at the City of Perth before spending a year at the Municipality of Cootamundra, in NSW, as Resident Engineer on a major sewerage treatment project. In June 1939 he was appointed Town Engineer at Boulder.
While employed at Boulder, he attended a course at the School of Military Engineering (SME) in Liverpool, NSW from June to August 1941. Upon its successful completion, he qualified as an instructor of Royal Australian Engineers (RAE) field units with the rank of Lieutenant in the CMF and began his military service with the 13th Field Company, RAE. He subsequently attended another SME course early in 1943 and was promoted to the rank of Captain in July 1943. His continuous full time war service was calculated to have run from November 1941 to August 1942 in the CMF and from September 1942 to March 1946 in the AIF.
As well as Kenneth’s postings with the RAE, to Darwin two months after the Japanese bombing, from April 1942 to October 1944, and to New Guinea, mainly on Bougainville, from October 1944 to June 1945, he travelled to Singapore in August/September 1945 on the MV Duntroon to assist in the repatriation of Australian ex-prisoners of war as part of the Australian Prisoner of War Reception group. The personnel on MV Duntroon disembarked on 13 September 1945, one day after the formal ceremony, held in the Singapore Municipal Building, of the surrender to Lord Louis Mountbatten of Japanese forces in Southeast Asia.
Kenneth left Singapore on 18 October 1945 accompanying evacuees on the POW evacuation ship Circassia and disembarked in Fremantle. He remained in Western Australia until his demobilization in March 1946 when he returned to civilian life and to his position of Town Engineer at Boulder, which he held until July 1946 when he took up his appointment as Town Engineer at the Municipality of Kalgoorlie. At the Boulder Council’s request, he also worked for that Municipality on a consulting basis in 1949-1950 until his move to Fremantle.
On February 15, 1947, he married Patricia Bateman, from the pioneering Fremantle family, at St Mary’s Church, West Perth. They had two sons Bruce and Michael and two daughters Lindsay and Heather.
While on the goldfields, he was a staunch supporter of the plan to establish a green belt around the two goldfields towns to help ameliorate the perennial dust problem and was a member of the Goldfields Regeneration Committee from its foundation in 1947 until his departure for Fremantle. He was also actively involved with the Boulder Municipal Housing Scheme and a similar scheme in Kalgoorlie. In 1939, early in his time as Boulder Municipal engineer, he had been responsible for the planting of the first street trees there and he remained a strong and active advocate for the planting of street trees upon his relocation to Kalgoorlie where an average of about 600 street trees were planted annually during his time there.
As a municipal civil engineer, he worked on the typical tasks expected of the position at the time. These included managing field staff and initiating or participating in various projects to improve sewerage, rubbish collection, footpaths, and roads by remaking them, adding curbing, and surfacing unsealed roads with bituminous material. In many cases he also initiated and managed the processes for acquiring better or more technically advanced equipment to improve the operational efficiency of the areas of his responsibility.
In October 1950 he was appointed City Engineer at the Municipality of Fremantle, a position he held until his retirement in February 1977. He provided a key input into the Stephenson Plan for metropolitan Perth, released in 1955 and in 1960, was appointed Fremantle City Planner, a position he held until 1972. At Fremantle, the task of providing suitable parking areas for increasing numbers of motor vehicles in a city not designed for them, occupied much of his time and energy. After retiring, he was appointed as a Member of the WA Town Planning Appeal Committee from 1980 to 1985 to advise the State Minister for Planning.
Between 1955 and 1977, Kenneth also worked as a Consulting Engineer to the Municipalities of Claremont and Peppermint Grove and to North Fremantle prior to its amalgamation with the City of Fremantle in 1961.
Kenneth joined the Institution of Engineers as a Junior Member in 1938, becoming a Member in 1944 and a Fellow in 1960. During his time at Fremantle, he was associated with events held by the Australian Road Research Board and was also a Member and a Committee Member of the WA Division of the Royal Australian Planning Institute (RAPI). He was elected a Fellow of the RAPI in 1971.
In 1969 he was invited to become a member of the Council of the Royal Automobile Club of WA (RAC) and was President from 1973 to 1975 and again from 1985 to 1987. During his terms as President, membership of the Club increased from 195,000 to more than 390,000. In 1973 he was also elected to the Board of directors of RAC Insurance, retiring from this position and from the RAC Council in 1988.
A son, Michael, followed his father in studying engineering at the University of Western Australia and graduating as a civil engineer.
Kenneth died on November 10, 1998, aged 84 years. He was predeceased by his wife Patricia who died in 1993 and was survived by his four children.
References:
West Australian, 10.11.1926, p. 10.
West Australian, 2.4.1937, p. 16.
Kalgoorlie Miner, 10.6.1939, p. 6.
Kalgoorlie Miner, 8.12.1939, p. 4.
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 26.6.1941, p. 1387.
NAA: B883, WX33372
Kalgoorlie Miner, 4.8.1949, p. 2.
Kalgoorlie Miner, 21.7.1950, p. 4.
Kalgoorlie Miner, 18.10.1950, p. 5.
West Australian, 7.8.1954, p. 8.
Plan for the Metropolitan Region, Perth and Fremantle, Western Australia, 1955: A Report Prepared for the Government of Western Australia by Gordon Stephenson and J.A. Hepburn.
Gateway (City of Fremantle), Spring, 1974.
Government Gazette WA, 15.2.1980, p. 491; 20.2.1981, p. 777; 19.3.1982, p. 927; 18.2.1983, p. 540; 23.3.1984, p. 750.
The Road Patrol, February-March, 1988, p. 3.
