Plan Showing Phosphate Deposits on Christmas Island Recherche Archipelago Eastern Group

Andrew Gibb Maitland (1864 - 1951)

Maitland was a geologist who qualified as a civil engineer at the Yorkshire College of Science, Leeds. He was appointed second assistant geologist to the Geological Survey of Queensland and in 1888. In 1891 Sir William MacGregor engaged him to undertake a geological survey of British New Guinea. His reports and maps are among the first accounts of the geology of Papua. Maitland resumed his varied survey work in Queensland but became increasingly involved with study of the intake beds of the Great Artesian Basin. When H. P. Woodward (1858-1917) resigned as government geologist of Western Australia to join the mining rush, Maitland accepted the offer to succeed him in July 1896. He completed field-work in the gulf country before leaving Queensland in October, reaching Perth to find he had been gazetted government geologist from 1 November. He was an acknowledged authority on underground water and had early successes in the West such as locating bores between Geraldton and North West Cape that still supply water. His predictions of artesian water resources, for instance beneath the Nullarbor Plain, likewise proved valuable. Water and gold were then crucial to prosperity in the West and Maitland and his staff inevitably devoted much attention to the goldfields. He himself spent several long and arduous seasons from 1903 in the Pilbara region, mapping a vast area and seeking geological order among its ancient rocks. In 1901 he had worked in unknown parts of the Kimberley division as geologist to an expedition led by F. S. Drake-Brockman.

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Harry Page Woodward (1858 - 1917)

Woodward was a geologist born on 16 May 1858 at Norwich, Norfolk, England, eldest son of Dr Henry Woodward, geologist and later keeper of geology (1880-1901) at the British Museum (Natural History). Educated at University College School and the Royal School of Mines, London, Harry gained field experience with the Geological Survey of England and Wales. In 1883-86 he was assistant government geologist in South Australia. He returned to London, intending to compete in the Indian geological survey examination; after a year at the Royal College of Science, in 1887 he was appointed government geologist for Western Australia. His arrival in Perth in 1888 coincided with the early gold rushes. He reported almost immediately on the Northam fields and was to visit every goldfield in the colony. Woodward's training was of immense practical value: his annual report for 1890, containing a general description of the geology of the region—republished as a Mining Handbook to the Colony of Western Australia (1894)—together with his related geological sketch map, was essential reading for miners and prospectors. He eventually published twenty-one reports and six geological maps. In the face of opposition, he induced the government to sink its first artesian bore at Guildford in 1894 and subsequently indicated other areas from which essential water was obtained. On 31 December 1890 at the parish church, Albany, he had married with Anglican rites Ellen Maude, daughter of J. F. T. Hassell. Having resigned in 1895 (though remaining a government consultant), Woodward joined Bewick, Moreing & Co. of London and Coolgardie as local partner and manager of their mining and consulting business on the eastern goldfields. By 1897 he had begun to practise on his own account as a mining engineer. His investigations substantiated the viability of coal seams at Collie and he became a mine-owner himself. In April 1905 he rejoined the public service as assistant government geologist. A fellow of the Geological Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the Imperial Institute, and an associate of the Institute of Civil Engineers, London, he was president (1896) of the Western Australian Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, and a member of the Institute of Mines and Metallurgy, London. Survived by his wife and three sons, Harry Woodward died of cancer on 8 February 1917 at St Omer Hospital, West Perth, and was buried in Karrakatta cemetery.

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