| O'Connor came from Ireland to Australia via New Zealand in 1863. In NZ he became a legendary figure in early civil engineering and the roads he surveyed in that country in 'the middle island' are still in use today. He also worked in the Greymouth and Hokitika areas, surveying roads and the harbour. He was invited to Western Australia by the premier of the time 'Big John' (later Sir) John Forrest. Thus 100 years and more ago O'Connor work saw the completion of the major goldfields pipeline scheme bringing water 560 kilometres from Mundaring Weir through the eastern desert goldfields to Coolgardie and Kalgoolie. He was also responsible for making the ports at Fremantle and Carnarvon. He also built the Mundaring Weir itself and a railway tunnel through the Darling Ranges. [A story within a story ... my grandfather worked as a blacksmith in the WA Govt Railways from 1896 when the workshops were in Fremantle but the making of the railway line to Coolgardie required that the shops be moved to Midland Junction and then to Bayswater. He and his bride lived in a tent city in Fremantle for the first two years of their married life and their first daughter, my aunt, was born there.] Early in 1902 O'Connor returned from a trip to South Australia in a very depressed state because he felt there had been many attacks on his works and plans which he took as personal attacks. On 10 March 1902 he left home on horseback and rode south on the beach towards where Robbs Jetty enters Cockburn Sound. Then he dismounted and let his horse go free. In about two feet of water and facing inland towards the dunes and the rising sun, he placed the muzzle of his revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Albert Cornwall, a labourer, found the riderless horse and then the body of O'Connor. A writer, A.G. Evans, has suggested that O'Connor had been treated shabbily in NZ and in WA was a victim of 'tall poppy syndrome', cut down by jealousies and misunderstandings. Much the same happened to Joern Utson of the Sydney Opera House and Burley Griffin of Canberra. We are left regretting the loss of talents that could have contributed even more. O'Connor triumphed over a disadvantaged beginning in famine-torn Ireland to become a master of his profession, a man of energy, probity, vision and application. |