Herman Bregenzer
BREGENZER, Herman, AMIEAust (1868-1949)
Herman Bregenzer was born on August 25, 1868, the son of German born engineer Louis Bregenzer and his Scottish born wife Margaret Bregenzer nee McInnes. He grew up in Ballarat where his father was the Shire Engineer and he was one of nine children. Herman matriculated and then studied at the University of Melbourne (Ormond College) from 1885.
He arrived in Western Australia at Albany on the “Bullara” on April 16, 1896 and travelled to the Goldfields. By 1898 he was working as surveyor at Broad Arrow and was Secretary of the Broad Arrow Tennis Club.
On January 5, 1898 he married Victoria May Gwyther at Kalgoorlie and they had two daughters, Ethel May (born December 1898) and Victoria Hope (born 1905).
In December 1900, he joined the Public Works Department as a draughtsman on the Coolgardie Water Supply Scheme, worked as a draughtsman for the Mines Water Supply Branch from July 1903 and became an Assistant Engineer working under P V O‘Brien on May 1, 1905.
In the re-organisation of 1912, he moved from being an Assistant Engineer at Coolgardie in the Mines Water Supply Branch to join Hugh Oldham in the Agricultural Supply Branch of the Water Supply Department. From 1927 until his retirement in June 1933 he was the District Engineer in Kalgoorlie.
Herman died on January 29, 1949, aged 80, being survived by his two daughters, with his wife having passed away in November 1948.
Herman’s brother, Ernest Raymond Bregenzer, had travelled with him to Western Australia but returned to the eastern states before enlisting in WWI. Ernest died in France on August 18, 1918 just before the war ended, fighting against the country of his father’s birth.
Another brother, Henry, also came to Western Australia and worked as an engineer, being a founding member of the Institution of Engineers, Australia in 1919.
Richard Hartley, in “River of Steel”, reports that Herman Bregenzer “was one of the last of O’Connor’s recruits still in the Department” and that “Mr Bregenzer possesses a detailed knowledge of his job and a history of the GWS which is valuable in the extreme and which is not possessed by any officer who might replace him”.
References:
Richard G Hartley, River of Steel, Access Press, Bassendean, 2007;
PSL 1905, 1911, 1915, 1918, 1922, 1927, 1930;
Cumming Papers.
