John (Jock) Adam

ADAM, John (Jock) ABalSM MAusIMM (c.1877 1955)

Adam was born at Amherst, near Clunes in Victoria, and studied at the Ballarat School of Mines from which he graduated in geology, mine surveying and metallurgy and obtained a mine manager’s certificate. He worked for a year at the Victoria United mine in Ballarat and then, in 1905, he joined Bewick Moreing and Company, mining consultants and mine managers worked at Loddon Valley Goldfields Ltd in the Talbot district of Victoria and at the Great Fitzroy Mines Ltd at Mount Chalmers in Queensland for seven years from 1907.

Elected a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers in 1910, he was underground manager at the Sons of Gwalia Ltd (MMGF Leonora) in 1914 and was superintendent of Great Fingall Consolidated at Day Dawn (MGF) in 1916. He returned to the Sons of Gwalia to become superintendent in 1917.

He was chairman of the Leonora Malcolm Road Board and gave evidence to the Royal Commission on Mining in 1925. When he left Gwalia in 1927 he had been the longest serving manager of the mine. He moved to Broken Hill to become assistant superintendent of the Zinc Corporation, arguably the most important mining company managed by Bewick Moreing in Australia. He retired as the Zinc Corporation’s manager at Broken Hill in 1937 to take up farming near Wangaratta in Victoria.

On the death of Victor T. Edquist, the general manager of Bewick Moreing in Australia, in 1944, Adam returned to the company as acting general manager based in Melbourne, a position which he held until July 1947 when H.V. Rowe, previously the superintendent of the Sons of Gwalia, took over as Bewick Moreing’s senior representative in Australia. When Adam retired the second time he had worked for Bewick Moreing for a total of 35 years.

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References:
LCER 1916;
JCMWA 1917, 1920;
Skinner 1914, 1920;
MCER May 1955;
ArcAusMM