|
|
Home
Search
Print
Login
Add Bookmark
-
| Birth |
1 Aug 1848 |
Leipzig, Germany  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Died |
4 Apr 1919 |
Mosman Reg. No 8580/1919 |
| Buried |
5 Apr 1919 |
Gore Hill Cemetery |
| Person ID |
I085 |
RopemakerDymocks |
| Last Modified |
9 Mar 2019 |
| Family |
Helen Esther Forsyth, b. 1862, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Victoria Reg No 21926/1862 , d. 17 Jun 1924, Mosman Reg. No 7378/1924 |
| Married |
29 Jul 1885 |
Sydney Reg No 1153/1885 |
| Children |
| | 1. Archibald C Schulze, b. 1886, Ryde Reg No 19271/1886 , d. 6 Apr 1889, Katoomba, NSW |
| | 2. Alwina Helen Schulze, b. 1888, Ryde Reg No 20183/1888 , d. 19 Jan 1975, Cremorne |
| | 3. Doris Elsie Schulze, b. 17 Oct 1890, Dangar Island, Hawkesberry River, NSW. Ryde Reg No 31021/1890 , d. 1945, Mosman Reg No 18531/1945 |
| | 4. Marjorie Marie Schulze, b. 1894, Ryde Reg No 30186/1894 , d. 25 Jun 1980 |
| | 5. Robert Forsyth Schulze, b. 1897, Drummoyne Reg No 11827/1897 , d. Bef 1975 |
|
| Last Modified |
28 Aug 2017 |
| Family ID |
F020 |
Group Sheet |
-
| Notes |
- Naturalised in 1914
The Sydney Morning Herald Wed 5 Aug 1885Page 1
SCHULZE?FORSYTH.?July 29, at St. Michael's Church, Surry
Hills, by the Rev. Hulton King, Carl Oscar, second son of the
late Constantin Schulze, of Leipzig, Germany, to Nellie, third
daughter of A. Forsyth, Esq., Manila House, Bourke-street,
Surry Hills.
The Sydney Morning Herald Monday 7 April 1919 Page 6
SCHULZE. ? April 4, 1919, at his residence, Basingstoke, Musgrave-street, Mosman, Carl Oscar Schulze, C.E., of pernicious anaemia, in his 71st year. Privately interred, April 5, at Gore Hill.
Gore Hill Cemetery
Schultz. Oscar PRS. A(NP) 92 05/04/1919 Mosman.
.
Carl Oscar Schulze: one of Australia's finest engineers
by Amanda Mackie, Philip Pells
Carl Oscar Schulze, or Oscar Schulze as he preferred to be known, was a German born engineer who lived and worked in Sydney from 1879 until his death in 1919. The documents we have uncovered show him to be an engineer with great vision, familiar with the latest developments in his field and ready to apply them to the industries of his adopted country. He was involved with the coal and shale mining operations in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, he was employed by the Union Bridge Company of New York as a consultant engineer on the first Hawkesbury rail bridge, he was a respected voice in Sydney town planning and he occupies a significant position in the history of civil engineering by virtue of a dam he designed and built on the Belubula River, NSW. Schulze's work is remarkable for its diversity, yet with the exception of the Belubula Dam, his achievements have remained largely unrecognised. When considered together they constitute a significant contribution to the engineering development of New South Wales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Early history
On 5 August 1914 Oscar Schulze received his certificate of naturalisation from the Commonwealth of Australia (1). From the paperwork accompanying his application we know that he was born on 1 August 1848 at Leipzig, Germany. After living in Switzerland from 1865 to 1869, he moved to the United States, where he lived from 1869 to 1876 before returning to his place of birth. We know little about his time in America except that he lived for some time in St Louis in the state of Missouri where he took out American citizenship (which later lapsed), and had an 'interest in the construction of the huge wooden grain elevators at St Louis and other places'. On his return to Leipzig he went on to construct 'what was probably the first Continental bulk grain store with elevator and cleansing machinery'. (2) In 1879 he travelled, via America, to Sydney as agent for the Leipzig printing press manufacturer, Ph Swiderski, at the Sydney International Exhibition? He arrived on the steamship City of Sydney on 1 September 1879.
Coal and oil shale mining in the Blue Mountains
Some 13 years before Oscar Schulze arrived in Australia the first attempts to develop the coal and oil shale resources of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales had begun. (4) In 1866 Campbell Mitchell (son of surveyor-general Sir Thomas Mitchell) had discovered seams of oil shale and coal in the Megalong Valley and along with his colleagues George King and Samuel Hebblewhite had taken out mineral leases over three 320-acre blocks of land. (5,6) Between 1877 and 1883 John Britty North and Robert Henry Reynolds had claimed the coal and oil shale resources of the Katoomba area and had opened up the Katoomba coal seam. (7) At the 1879 Sydney Exhibition, while Schulze was representing Ph Swiderski at the German court, J. B. North's Katoomba Coal and Township Company had on display a 200 kg block of coal taken from the Katoomba coal seam. (8)
In 1883 the Gladstone Coal Company Limited was registered (9) and by 1884 had begun work on a major project to mine coal in the Wentworth Falls area. This latter venture was both short lived and unsuccessful, because of poor quality coal, and would have been of little interest were it not for the construction of a 2km long aerial ropeway for coal transport--technology which was later transferred to J. B. North's mining activities at Katoomba. At both Wentworth Falls and Katoomba, Oscar Schulze was retained to design and supervise the construction of the ropeway.
The aerial ropeway used at Wentworth Falls and later, Katoomba, was at the forefront of technology used for mine haulage. Moving material, such as ore, over rugged terrain and long distances has always been a difficult and costly exercise. Nowadays we construct haul roads and use massive trucks, or we use conveyor belts, or slurry pipelines. None of these technologies were available in the 19th century. Until the mid-1800s the only means available were pack animals or bullock carts.
In 1856 an Englishman, Robinson, obtained a patent for an aerial ropeway, wherein a moving endless cable carries skips that are gripped, or clipped, on to the cable. Many of these moving cable ropeways were built but they were limited in carrying capacity. A breakthrough occurred in the 1860s by the introduction of a double rope system wherein the skips were carried on wheels running along fixed track ropes, and were pulled by a separate, lighter, rope, to which they were gripped. (10) This concept was worked up into an efficient system by the German engineers Adolph Bleichert and Theodor Otto. (11) Bleichert parted with Otto before the system was perfected and it was Adolf Bleichert & Co that by 1877 had registered the necessary patents for a system which, by the early 1900s was the dominant method of ore transport in the world. One of these ropeways, serving the Fatima copper mines in the Cordilleras of Argentina, became one of the wonders of the industrial world.
To return to Wentworth Falls and the Gladstone Coal Company, an important point to note is that Adolf Bleichert and Co was only established in Leipzig in October 1877, yet by 1884 one of their systems was in operation in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. We believe that the presence, in Sydney, of Oscar Schulze, who would certainly have been aware of technological developments in his home town, was crucial to this rapid (for the times) transfer of technology.
Three entries in the Bleichert Wire Ropeways Customer Register held at the Saxony State Archives document Schulze's orders on behalf of both the Gladstone Coal Company and later, J. B. North's mining companies (12):
Installation No. 93 [1880]
Customer: Oskar Schulze, Sydney
Item: Wire Ropeway
Invoice Amount: 2,982 Marks
[later entry in red ink]: Most of the parts of this installation were returned and used for installation No.195
Installation No.195 [1884]
Customer: Oskar Schulze and Wagemann [this entry has been crossed out and
substituted with:] Gladstone Coal Company In Bankruptcy [entry in red ink]
Location: Sydney, Katoomba, Australia
Item: Wire ropeway, utilising installation Nr. 93
Length: 1,810 Metres
Hourly capacity: 20,000 kg
Cargo: Coal
Invoice amount: 50,000 Marks
Installation No.318 [1888]
Customer: Oscar Schulze, Sydney
Item: Wire Ropeway
Length: 765 metres
Cargo: Coal
Invoice amount: 13,066 Marks
[Remark in red ink]: June 28, 1904 Installation does no longer exist
A considerable amount of planning went into the development of the Gladstone Coal Company's colliery. The Town and Country Journal of November 1884 recorded: (13)
Considerable progress has already been made in the operations of
the mine, which, from the number of miners' houses erected, has
assumed the appearance of a small village. There are four or five
miles of tramway rails on the ground, and the uprights to carry the
pendent wire tramway are almost in position ... The contractor for
the work is Mr Oscar Schulze, who designed the plans accepted by
the Government for improved wharf accommodation at the Circular
Quay and Darling Harbour.
The Department of Mines Annual Report (14) records that on 6 September 1884 work had 'commenced by the Gladstone Coal Co for opening their coal mine at Gladstone near Katoomba'. A newspaper article of May 1885, covering the official opening, recorded: (15)
The coal from this mine is being delivered by a novel principle,
the company having adopted an aerial tramway, which, however, has
been known in gold mining for some years. The drive is situated
about 1 1/2 miles from the railway, and as it is about 1500 feet
below the railway level, and a deep gorge also intervenes, a line
of the ordinary principle was out of the question. The machinery,
which is most ingeniously devised, was imported from Germany, and
erected by Mr O. Shultz [sic], civil engineer ...
However, by 1886 the Gladstone Coal Company had ceased operations after extracting only about 200 tons of low grade coal. (16) At the annual general meeting of the company on 27 July 1887 the shareholders voted unanimously to wind up the company because it 'cannot by reason of its liabilities continue its business'. (17)
Today, only traces of the Gladstone Bleichert cableway remain. Near the Fairmont Hotel's tennis courts are the remains of the winder engine foundations. This is also close to the location of the only photograph (Figure 1) that we have found of one of the timber towers for the ropeway, a photograph taken in 1898, long after the cables and fittings were taken away. About 150 metres into the forest from the north-western edge of the Leura golf course is an 8m long by 2.5m wide, and 2.5m deep concrete pit which was the tensioning pit for the cableway. Scattered around it are lumps of coal.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
We don't know when the Bleichert ropeway was dismantled at Gladstone. What we do know, is that by late 1888 it was in operation at Katoomba servicing J. B. North's oil shale mine in the Jamison Valley. The 1888 Department of Mines Annual Report (18) states:
Katoomba Shale Mines - Are situated about 2 1/4 miles from the
Katoomba Colliery. About 30 men are employed driving adits proving
the thickness and quality of the shale. Nos. 3 and 4 adits are
opened out on the longwall system, and a good current of air is
passing along the faces. About 1,400 tons of shale has been worked
out of the several adits. The mode of haulage from the mines to the
top of the Katoomba Colliery incline is by means of a pendant wire
tramway, which spans gullies and deep ravines. Over 2 miles has
been constructed, at a cost of about 11,000 [pounds sterling].
The position of the relocated ropeway at Katoomba is known exactly from the remains visible today of the unloading structure foundations at the top of the cliffs, of several tower foundations along the route, and of the discharge system in the Jamison Valley. The location, as surveyed, is shown in Figure 2. As shown in Figure 3, the cableway was supported on approximately 8m high towers made from hardwood poles. There were 47 of these over the 3.2km length (see Figure 4). The delivery point was near the edge of the cliff, where today is the main tower of the Katoomba Scenic Cableway. A photograph of the unloading staithe is given in Figure 5. This photograph was taken in April or May 1889 shortly before operations began. The Katoomba Times of 25 May 1889 (19) reported:
Readers will be glad to know that the cable tram to Mr J. B.
North's shale mine is a perfect success. Mr Schultz [sic] is under
contract to deliver 4000 tons of shale in Sydney within a
fortnight. All hands are busy getting the shale from the mine to
the reserve opposite the Katoomba engine-house, and the overseer
has to give a helping hand with the trucks. On Wednesday, 381
trucks of shale were emptied on the reserve and on Thursday, up to
noon, 137 trucks of shale were shot out. Each truck contains half a
ton of shale. This is good news for the whole of the colony.
On Saturday 8 June 1889, the same newspaper recorded as follows:
The shale has been working grand for the last week. They have been
delivering on an average 80 tons per day.
However, then follows an ominous statement in light of subsequent event
There was a day and a half delay this week owing to the main rope
giving way.
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]
As detailed by Pells and Hammon (2009) serious problems with the cable carrying the loaded skips developed in about August 1889 and the final fracturing of this cable and collapse of the aerial ropeway occurred sometime between December 1889 and January 1890. This put an end to the mining activities of J. B. North at Katoomba; his leases were subsequently taken over by the Australian Kerosene Oil and Mineral Company, of Joadja fame.
This was a terrible time in the life of Oscar Schulze. He had been responsible for the design and operation of the ropeway, and would no doubt have been dismayed at the failure. However, this paled into insignificance when, in the same period, his first-born son, Archibald, aged 3, died and was buried at Katoomba.
First Hawkesbury railway bridge
On 25 January 1886 the New South Wales Government awarded the Union Bridge Company of Pennsylvania a tender for the design and construction of a Hawkesbury River railway bridge. (20) Oscar Schulze was subsequently employed by this company as the resident consultant engineer for the project and thereafter as its representative in New South Wales.
The tender for this bridge generated great interest in the engineering world, with the British engineering fraternity taking it as a given that one of their traditional riveted designs would win the contract. Much to their chagrin, the upstarts from the United States, with a new lightweight design based on pin jointed connections and tension rod members, won the day. The Union Bridge Company then sublet much of the work to various firms including Anderson and Barr from New York, which was responsible for the foundations, and Ryland and Morse from Chicago, which was to erect the superstructure. In 1938 E. K. Morse wrote an article for the American Society of Civil Engineers reminiscing about his experiences erecting the Hawkesbury Bridge. In it he records: 'I was indebted to Oscar Schultz (sic), resident engineer of the Union Bridge Company, for much needed advice.' (21)
A number of other sources also document Schulze's involvement throughout the project. An article by C. O. Burge (22) for the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK) notes: 'The lines and spans of the bridge were located by a system of triangulation carried out by Mr F. Small ... as representing the Government, and by Mr O. Schulze on the part of the contractors.' The newspapers of the day followed the progress of construction. The Sydney Morning Herald of 16 January 1888 records: (23) 'At the invitation of the contractors, about 70 members of the Engineering Association of NSW visited Peat's Ferry on Saturday for the purpose of viewing the works now in progress ... the visitors were met by Mr Oscar Schulze, engineer for the Union Bridge Company of New York.'
Construction lasted from 1886 to 1889 and for at least some of the time Schulze lived on Dangar Island, where the bridge spans were assembled. An article in The Centennial Magazine (24) records that Dangar Island was leased by the American firm to house the workers and their families: 'Mr Schultz (sic) the consulting engineer, the contractors and their department heads occupy those pleasantly verandahed cottages beneath the pine trees ...' Schulze was also present at the final testing operations of the bridge held in April 1889. (25)
In its time the first Hawkesbury River bridge was a world-renowned structure due to its length and the extraordinary depth of its caisson pier foundations. Pier No. 6 was sunk 162 feet below water level, at that time the deepest caisson in the world. Its construction was a significant impetus to engineering in the Colony.
The Junction Reefs dam
While Oscar Schulze may be virtually unknown to the Australian public, he designed and supervised the construction of one structure which is known worldwide by the fraternity of engineers involved in arch dams. This structure is the Junction Reefs dam on the Belubula River in central New South Wales (Figure 6). It was designed by Schulze in 1895 and is recognised internationally as one of the earliest dams of this type, and the first multi-arch dam in Australia. (26)
The history of this dam began in 1895 when Lyndhurst Goldfields Ltd, an English company, consolidated various gold mining claims at Junction Reefs and poured an enormous amount of money into infrastructure for fine crushing of the ore, and the newly developed cyanide leaching system. (27) Oscar Schulze was retained to design a 2000 megalitre dam on the Belubula River and an innovative hydropower system. This involved a low-pressure steel pipeline running along contour for about 1.4km downstream of the dam, from which four 15-inch steel penstocks were run about 200 feet (about 60m) down the hillsides to drive Pelton turbines. The three largest Pelton turbines were 6 feet, 4 feet and 3 feet in diameter and drove the following equipment:
* 35 stamp batteries,
* mills,
* air compressor for rock drills,
* vanners (a type of shaking table), and cyanide mixing equipment.
The fourth small Pelton turbine was used to generate electricity. However, this one was not successful because at that time a suitable governor had not been invented. So as electric lights and other equipment were turned off the Pelton wheel went faster and faster, the generated current went up, and the remaining lights were blown!
[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]
The wall was completed in a remarkably short period of nine months. It included 6000 cubic yards of concrete and half a million bricks, all hand made on site. It is an amazing structure and has survived overtopping by floods, far greater than Schulze could have contemplated, for more than a century. After the dam was completed Schulze delivered a paper to the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers at Melbourne in 1897 describing its construction.(28) The paper shows that Schulze was a proponent of alternate energy sources--promoting the use of windmills and hydropower in Australian mines where typically the steam engine was the power source of choice. The Belubula Dam remains in excellent condition 112 years after its construction (Figure 7) and is listed on the NSW State Heritage Register, where it is recognised as forming 'part of the classic history of development and advancement in mining engineering technology' in Australia.
Other engineering work
Oscar Schulze's standing as a respected Sydney engineer is demonstrated by his presence at the 1891 Royal Commission into City and Suburban Railways. When considering the question of extending the railway from Redfern into the city, the commissioners examined evidence from a number of sources--chief among them the railway commissioners and engineers from the department. Evidence was also given by A. C. Mountain, a former city surveyor, as well as Norman Selfe and John Young, prominent Sydneysiders whose legacies are now widely acknowledged. And then, perhaps remarkably, the testimony of Oscar Schulze, a German-born engineer, who had been living in Sydney for 11 years.
The design Schulze presented before the commission on 20 June 1890 is shown in Figure 8. It consists of three elements: a series of loop tram and railways to service the city; a central goods and passenger terminal located on reclaimed land at Darling Harbour and connecting with city tramways to the west and east and, if desirable, Circular Quay; and an opening bridge from Balmain to Balls Head via Goat Island to service the North Shore. One of the interesting features of Schulze's proposal is a suggestion to integrate rail and tramways by 'construct(ing) special locomotives and cars fit to run around 400-foot curves, and on tramway rails, being a medium between our railway and tramway engines and cars'. (29)
Although he was not a proponent of a bridge from Dawes Point to Milson's Point, at a second hearing on 11 July 1890, Schulze also put forward plans for cantilever bridges, designed by the Union Bridge Company of New York that would suit such a location (Figure 9). At the same time he expanded further on his proposal for a railway line, for goods only, from Darling Harbour heading east around Miller's Point and Dawes Point to Circular Quay. This latter proposal drew largely on one developed by Schulze seven years previously, in his prize-winning design for wharfage improvement at Circular Quay?' At that time he had been in the colony for just four years. Schulze's winning entry, 'Through Night to Light', consisted of seven large drawings and an elaborate specification and prompted a correspondent to The Sydney Morning Herald to remark on the 'evidently very diligent and assiduous gentleman' whose ideas were portrayed in such 'voluminous fashion' (30) The Mitchell Library holds an artist's impression of the design which was published as a supplement with the Illustrated Sydney News at the time. (31) The 1891 Royal Commission on city and suburban transport was headed by Sydney Burdekin. The final recommendation was to adopt the somewhat controversial scheme put forward by the railway commissioners, which proposed a central station to be located on a Hyde Park site. Oscar Schulze's design was not received favourably by the railway engineers whose expert opinion had been sought by the commission. The Darling Harbour location was dismissed as out of the question for a central passenger station, while the question of tramways was deemed to be beyond the scope of the current enquiry 'as the question before the Commission (was) one of railways, not tramways'.
[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]
Activities away from engineering
Oscar Schulze was a patriotic German and an active member of the German community in Sydney. In March 1893 Charles Wroblewski launched the Deutsch-Australische Post under the editorial control of his Foreign Publishing Company. Oscar Schulze was the editor of Wroblewski's paper from July 1893 until July 1894. Then in 1895 Schulze launched a separate newspaper, the Deutsch-Australisches Echo. It appears that there was a disagreement between these two gentlemen, for in the third edition of the Echo, Schulze denounces Wroblewski as a 'Galician Pole who displays his French sympathies at any given opportunity' and his newspaper as 'offer(ing) its readers a small selection of printed articles published without permission and without acknowledgment of the source'. (33)
[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]
The Deutsch-Australisches Echo was a weekly newspaper issued as a supplement to the German weekly Das Echo. The paper's subtitle describes it as 'The voice for the overall interests of German culture in Australia'. It was published by the Deutsches Literarisches Institut (the German Literary Institute), of which Oscar Schulze was the director. Figure 10 shows the front page of the December 19, 1895 issue of the Echo and gives some insight into the activities of the Institut. The photograph appears to be of a reading room at the Institut and the caption translates as follows:
German Literary Institut
113 Pitt Street, Sydney
Bookstore, Library, Reading Hall, Classes
Rich assortment of German, French and English books and newspapers
available at German bookstore prices. A library comprising 5000
books; Reading hall with 60 German magazines; Purchase of German
and other books. German accidental printery. Printer and publishing
house of the "Deutsch Australisches Echo".
The Deutsches Literarisches Institut opened in July 1895. (34) In addition to the services mentioned above the Institut also hosted guest speakers and displays, all with a decidedly German flavour. Events advertised in the Echo for the months of August and September included a lecture on the German Marshall Islands, readings of the poetry of Theodor Homer and a display of photographs of the artwork of German-born Louis Tannert (then director of the Art Gallery of South Australia). The Deutsches Literarisches Institut operated in Sydney until early 1899. Issues of the Deutsche-Australische Post from January 1899 refer to the closing of the Institut and include advertisements for the sale, by auction, of books and furniture from the Deutsches Institut. (35) Interestingly in December 1899 the Sydney Stock Exchange purchased the building which housed the Institut at 113 Pitt Street for 21,947 [pounds sterling]. The existing premises were demolished to make way for the first dedicated Stock Exchange building. (36)
It is not clear how many issues of the Deutsch-Australisches Echo were printed. The Mitchell Library holds issues of 1 August 1895 through to 17 December 1895. We know that Schulze was responsible for the design and construction of the Belubula Dam in 1896 and he would have been on the Lyndhurst site for most of the nine months that it took to build. In addition, the Sydney Sands Directory entry for Oscar Schulze in 1896-97 gives only a residential address. However, by 1898 he is back in Sydney and listed in the Sands Directory as both publisher and editor of the Deutsch-Australische Post, with no mention of the Echo. Charles Wroblewski had by this time left Sydney, moving to Victoria in 1896.
Both the Deutsch-Australisches Echo and the Deutsch-Australische Post were printed by Oscar Schulze under the name of Southern Cross Printing Works. By 1899 this business was occupying premises at 24 Jamison Street and had expanded to print The Australian Philatelist, the Colonial and Military Gazette, and The Australian Hotelkeeper and Tobacconist. Other examples of material printed by Southern Cross Printing Works have been located in the Mitchell Library, including a book of poetry entitled Fugitive Verses, by A. F. Bassett Hull, a prominent public servant and naturalist. This book was part of the original D. S. Mitchell collection.
In March 1901 Southern Cross Printing Works was registered as Southern Cross Printing Company, (37) Oscar Schulze being one of three directors. The Memorandum of Association states that one of the main objects of the company was to 'purchase and take over from Oscar Schulze the printing business carried on by him under the title Southern Cross Printing Works ... together with all machinery, printing plant, furniture and other materials now in use in connection with the said business'. However, Southern Cross Printing Company was a short-lived venture, ceasing operations some 18 months later.
Personal life
Oscar Schulze married Helen Ester Forsyth (daughter of Archibald Forsyth, ropemaker and politician) in Sydney in 1884 and they had five children born between 1886 and 1897; two boys (Robert and Archibald) and three girls (Elwina, Doris and Marjorie). Their first-born son, Archibald, died in 1889 (aged 3) at Katoomba. Entries in the Sydney Sands Directory indicate that Schulze lived in various Sydney suburbs during his lifetime, including Hunter's Hill, Stanmore and Mosman. Schulze appears to have been quite pedantic, because in 1899 he arranged for a warrant to be issued for the arrest of Stewart Milne, an accountant, for embezzling 2 [pounds sterling]! (38) Milne was arrested but not prosecuted. It was not a good year for Schulze because a warrant was also issued by the Water Police for the arrest of Mr C. Von Hoffman for the theft, from Schulze, of a theodolite and 200 books. (39) Von Hoffman was arrested and the theodolite plus 70 books were recovered. (40) We have not found out what happened to the other 130 books!
His last decade
Details of Schulze's career from the early 1900s until his death in 1917 are sketchy. Entries in the Sands Directory indicate that he was working as an engineering consultant in Sydney but we have been able to locate only a few examples of his work, such as a journal article on grain storage submitted to the Agricultural Gazette of NSW in 1901 (41) and a set of building plans submitted to the city council in 1911. (42) In 1904 he was employed as the managing engineer of the Weimar Corporation--an Australian division of a German company known as the Thuringer Musterlager.
At the outbreak of World War I Oscar Schulze was 66 years old and, along with hundreds of other Germans, he applied for, and was granted, naturalisation. It is possible that his career suffered from the anti-German sentiment that was rising in Australia at the beginning of the 20th century. Although many Germans were interned during the war, we can find no evidence that Oscar Schulze was one of these. He died in 1919 at the age of 71. He is buried at the Gore Hill Cemetery in Sydney, his grave marked by a small, nondescript headstone.
Macquarie University (Amanda Mackie) and University of NSW (Philip Pells)
Notes
(1) Department of External Affairs, Correspondence files 1903-1938, 1914/12845, National Archives of Australia.
(2) Oscar Schulze, 'The continental system of grain storage', Agricultural Gazette of NSW, 1901, pp. 1511-17.
(3) Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition, 1879, Sydney, 1881, DSM/606/S, Mitchell Library.
(4) For a detailed history of the mining industries at Katoomba and surrounding areas see Philip Pells and Phillip Hammon, The Burning Mists of Time--A Technological and Social History of Mining at Katoomba, Blackheath, NSW, 2009.
(5) Joseph E. Came, 'The Kerosene Shale Deposits of New South Wales', Memoirs of the Geological Survey of New South Wales, Sydney, 1903.
(6) Record of conditional purchases for the land district of Hartley 1875-83, NSW Government Gazette, 1883 pp. 334-41.
(7) Pells and Hammon, The Burning Mists of Time.
(8) Sydney International Exhibition, 1879: visitors' companion, Sydney, DSM/606/S, Mitchell Library.
(9) Registers of public companies 1874-1937, Series No.12949, State Records NSW.
(10) A. J. Waller-Tayler, Aerial or Wire-Rope Tramways, London, 1898.
(11) Peter von Bleichert, 'Adolf Bleichert's Wire Ropeways', Wire Rope News and Sling Technology, June 2005.
(12) Details on the Customer Order Books of Adolf Bleichert held at the Saxony State Archives were kindly provided by Dr Hoetzel and Rolf A. von Bleichert.
(13) Town and Country. Journal, 22 November, 1884.
(14) NSW Department of Mines, Annual Report, 1884.
(15) As quoted in Jim Smith, The Blue Mountains Mystery Track, Lindeman Pass. Winmalee,1990, pp. 34-35.
(16) NSW Department of Mines, Annual Report, 1886.
(17) Gladstone Coal Company Limited, Documents" lodged under the Companies Act 1875-1975, Series No. 2951, State Records NSW.
(18) NSW Department of Mines, Annual Report, 1888.
(19) The Katoomba Times, 25 May 1889.
(20) W. K. King and D. J. Fraser, 'The Hawkesbury River Railway Bridge (1886-1946)', The Engineering Conference, Institution of Engineers Australia, Newcastle, 1983.
(21) E. K. Morse, 'Erecting the Hawkesbury Bridge, 1887-1889: Reminiscences of a Thrilling Construction Job in Australia', Civil Engineering, vol. 8, p. 682.
(22) C. O. Burge, 'The Hawkesbury Bridge, New South Wales', Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, vol. 101, 1889-1890, pp. 2-12.
(23) The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 January 1888.
(24) 'A Great Railway Bridge', Centennial Magazine, vol. 1, 1889-90, pp. 253-63.
(25) H. Deane, 'Railway bridge over the River Hawkesbury', Specifications for railway and tramway construction 1879-1929, Series No. 15290, State Records NSW.
(26) H. Chanson and D. P. James, 'Historical development of arch dams in Australia', Research Report No. CE 157, University of Queensland, 1998.
(27) E. F. Pittman, The Mineral Resources of New South Wales, Government Printer, Sydney, 1901.
(28) Oscar Schulze, 'Notes on the Belubula Dam', Transactions of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers, vol 4, 1897, pp. 160-72.
(29) Progress Report on the Extension of the Railway into the City and the North Shore Bridge Connection, Royal Commission on City and Suburban Railways, Sydney, 1891.
(30) The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 1883.
(31) The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May, 1883.
(32) Illustrated Sydney News, 29 September 1883. For a copy of the supplement see Gibbs, Shallard and Co, 'Proposed Wharfage Improvements ] 883', XVI/1883/1, Mitchell Library.
(33) Deutsch-Australisches Echo, 31 August 1895.
(34) Deutsch-Australisches Echo, 22 August 1895.
(35) Deutsch-Australische Post, January 7 1899.
(36) S. Salsbury and K. Sweeney, The Bull, the Bear and the Kangaroo: the history of the Sydney Stock Exchange, Sydney, 1988.
(37) Southern Cross Printing Company, Documents lodged under the Companies Act 1875-1975, Series No. 12951, State Records NSW.
(38) NSW Government Gazette, 1899, p. 245.
(39) NSW Government Gazette, 1899, p. 4 l 9.
(40) NSW Government Gazette, 1900, p. 96.
(41) Schulze, 1901.
(42) Building Application Plans, 0878/11, City of Sydney Archives.
COPYRIGHT 2011 Royal Australian Historical Society
COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning
Bibliography for: "Carl Oscar Schulze: one of Australia's finest engineers"
Amanda Mackie "Carl Oscar Schulze: one of Australia's finest engineers". Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society. FindArticles.com. 05 Nov, 2011.
COPYRIGHT 2011 Royal Australian Historical Society
COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning
Reference / Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society / June, 2011
|
|
|
Find
Surnames
Bookmarks
Places
Dates
Cemeteries
Search People
Search Families
Photos
Documents
Histories
Recordings
Videos
Albums
All Media
What's New
Most Wanted
Reports
Statistics
Notes
Sources
Repositories
Contact Us
1848 - 1919
Home
Search
Print
Login
Add Bookmark
Individual
Ancestors
Descendants
Relationship
Timeline