Engineers Australia
Engineering Heritage Australia
Engineering Australia Queensland Division
Engineering Heritage National Landmark Award
McKay's Minimum Energy Loss Culvert, Redcliffe
Plaque unveiling by Her Excellency Ms Penelope Wensley AC, Governor of Queensland
Humpybong Creek. Redcliffe Foreshore, Redcliffe
29th June 2011
Mayor, Moreton Bay Regional Council, Councillor Allan Sutherland,
Councillors James Houghton, Rae Frawley and Mick Gillam,
Deputy President, Engineers Australia Queensland Division, Mr Steven Goh,
National Deputy President, Engineers Australia, Professor David Hood,
National Chairman, Engineering Heritage Australia (EHA), Mr Owen Peake,
Chairman, EHA Heritage Recognition Committee, Mr Bill Jordan,
Chairman, Engineering Heritage Australia, Queensland Division and Master of Ceremonies, Mr
Andrew Barnes,
Secretary, Engineering Heritage Australia Panel, Mr Brian McGrath PSM and other members of the
Panel,
Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Queensland, Professor Colin Apelt,
Members of the family of the late Professor Gordon McKay,
Distinguished international guests and delegates to the 34th IAHR World Congress,
Other members of the engineering profession,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good afternoon, one and all, and thank you, Andrew for the warm welcome. I am delighted to be
here and once again to have the honour to unveil an Engineering Heritage National Landmark, this
time in the beautiful Moreton Bay Region, in the thriving city of Redcliffe, here at the intriguingly
named Humpybong Creek.
We have heard a good deal already today about the subject of today's ceremony: the McKay
Minimum Energy Loss Culvert and its ingenious engineer creator, Professor Gordon McKay - and I
will return myself to both those rich subjects in a few moments, but first, for the benefit of our
interstate and international guests, visiting Queensland to attend the 34th World Congress of the
International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering, the 33rd Australian National Hydrology
and Water Resources Symposium and the 10th Australian National Conference on Hydraulics in
Water Engineering, I would like to give you a little background on this distinctive location and some
additional contextual colouring, which seems to me quite relevant for today's event - and for the many
engineers and ‘water-engineers' present.
Redcliffe holds the distinction of being the location of the very first European settlement in
Queensland. It was first visited by Mathew Flinders in1799, who gave it the name "Red Cliff Point",
after the red-coloured cliffs visible from the Bay, but it was another explorer, John Oxley, who in 1823
recommended "Red Cliff Point" as the location for a new northern colony, reporting that ships could
land at any tide and easily get close to the shore; and also having found some waterholes in a
creek. The Governor of the day, Sir Thomas Brisbane, then in charge of NSW, agreed to this
proposal and the settlement - a mixture of soldiers, their families and convicts - was established the
following year, in September 1824, the group landing on the beach, near the mouth of the
creek. Less than a year later, the settlement was abandoned and the colony moved south to a site on
the Brisbane River, now the present capital of Brisbane - why? Several reasons: mosquitoes,
Aboriginal attacks, a lack of safe anchorage facilities AND because of the need for a more reliable
water supply! Where were the water engineers then?
A few buildings were left standing at Redcliffe and it is claimed that the local Aborigines, a clan called
the ‘Ningy Ningy' - with what one historian has described as "a nice sense of irony" - called the
derelict remains "Oompie Bong", meaning "dead house". The name stuck and not only the creek that original water source for the 1824 convict settlement - but I am told also the Peninsula itself was
later called, in an anglicised version of the word, "Humpybong"; and so this continues today as
Humpybong Creek.
Although farming began in the 1860's and urbanisation commenced about 1880, Redcliffe remained
an isolated retreat until 1935, when another one of Queensland's engineering marvels - the
Hornibrook Bridge - was built, stretching across the mouth of the Pine River and Hay's inlet. At the
time it was constructed, the Hornibrook Bridge (named after Sir Manuel Hornibrook, the Chief
Engineer of the project) at 2.684 kilometres was the longest road bridge in the Southern Hemisphere
and the second longest in the world, after the Maestri Bridge in the United States and it is on that link
that modern Redcliffe was founded. So Bravo to the engineers!
Since then, the new Ted Smout Memorial Bridge has been opened - in 2010 - to claim the title of
Australia's longest bridge - at 2,740 metres - the duplicated bridge built to last 100 years and to
withstand a one in 2,000 year storm. It is the first bridge in Australia designed to withstand Hurricane
Katrina-type storm events and is also possibly the only Australian bridge which may have to deal with
shallow water storm surge - all facts and statistics likely to be of considerable interest, I assume, to
members of this audience, but equally, or even more importantly, to the decision-makers and
planners dealing with the increased storms, floods and natural disasters affecting countries all around
the world, whether Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the
tornadoes in the US and most recently and somewhat surprisingly, in neighbouring New Zealand and
of course, our own catastrophic summer of unprecedented rains, topped by Cyclone Yasi.
But back to Humpybong Creek and the engineering marvel that we are feting today.
As Redcliffe grew - as a residential area and favoured holiday destination - the creek became a
swimming lagoon, popular with locals and holidaymakers. There was a short timber bridge which
carried Redcliffe Parade over the creek. The outlet was narrow because the waves in Moreton Bay
kept trying to fill in the creek outlet. When Redcliffe suffered heavy storms, the lagoon level always
rose considerably before the flood could flow out through the narrow outlet.
In the 1950's, as you have heard from Professor Apelt, the predecessors of Mayor Allan Sutherland
and his fellow Councillors wanted to develop the northern end of the Central Business District.
According to the Redcliffe Historical Society, "One way to prevent the water level in the lagoon from
rising was to excavate a wide creek outlet and put a long bridge over it. Unfortunately, as the last
flood became a memory, the waves would transport the beach sand back to the outlet - and the outlet
would become narrow again, requiring expensive maintenance if flooding was to be avoided."
What, then, was to be done?
I think you all know the answer: consult the engineers - and not just any engineers, but the Civil
Engineering Department of the University of Queensland, and within it, Dr Gordon McKay a Hydraulic
engineer who in England and Germany had become an expert in the use of physical scale models to
solve engineering problems and who, after his arrival in Brisbane in 1951, was developing a
reputation for finding ingenious solutions to drainage, river flooding, dam and coastal problems.
And the rest, as they say, is history - or in this case, the engineering history, as you have heard from
some of the earlier speakers, notably Professor Colin Apelt, through the creation of the Minimum
Energy Loss Culvert which now bears McKay's name.
For the Redcliffe Council, it offered a wonderful solution to their problem: based on the model that
McKay constructed - with streamlined walls on the inlet and outlet structures - the Humpybong Creek
Culvert was constructed in 1960, with the car park mentioned earlier built over it, and the Culvert has
operated successfully - and saved successive councils a great deal of money and effort ever since!
For the ordinary citizens of Redcliffe - the shoppers or visitors strolling through the car park or
crossing Sutton Street - although the more observant ones might note that the concrete shapes of the
drain - the flared structure with the curved weir - are a bit unusual, I would be very surprised if anyone
realises that these structures/ this system actually "represent the world's first application of a brilliant
energy saving idea".
Which is precisely why this plaque and its associated Marker and interpretive panel, and this
Engineering Heritage National Landmark system itself, is so important, because it tells everyone, not
just engineers but everyone in the community who will stop to look at them and to read the panel, of
the significance of this engineering feat - of the achievement and contribution of this particular
individual - but also draws attention, in a simple but striking way, to the pivotal role that engineers play
in our communities and the practical difference that their ideas can make in our lives.
Of course, a small plaque and interpretive panel doesn't tell the whole story - in this case,
representing only a part of the achievement involved, but I would hope it might entice some passersby, some readers, to explore further, to want to know more about Gordon McKay and what followed
from his design of this Culvert. Certainly, it led me to do so, but then, I have an interest broadly in
history and heritage and in engineering, including water engineering: my great-uncle, Alf McCulloch,
recognised formally as ‘an Eminent Queensland Engineer', having been Chief Engineer of the
Townsville Electric and Water authority in the 1930's, then later head of SEQ; and, more recently, my
late brother-in-law, John Ward, having been Principal Planning Engineer with the Queensland
Department of Natural Resources and -importantly - Chairman of the Institution of Engineers Water
Panel.
Having been enticed to undertake further exploration and further reading about this Culvert and
McKay's work led me to the view that the consequences (or perhaps in this company I could say the
‘flow on effects') of this Culvert construction were mighty.
One was the derivation of the design method for this type of structure so they could be built with
confidence anywhere in the world; another was a new type of "minimum energy" weir which McKay
developed by considering the behaviour of the flow over the weir at the culvert inlet - another
remarkable design, which was first applied here in Queensland in the construction of a weir in
Clermont in 1962, then ten years later, in a weir built at Chinchilla on the Condamine River - the
largest example of its kind. Experts today still marvel at the beauty and ingenuity of this design.
Ingenuity, it seems to me, was the hallmark of Professor McKay's work, along with a capacity for
innovation and unorthodox thinking.
One report I consulted spoke of his having an extraordinarily innovative mind. Another brief
biography I read used similar terms, referring to his "exceptionally creative mind", his treatment of
engineering as an art form and his being known for delivering new and original solutions, bypassing
calculation and logical development as he intuitively developed the form of his solution.
The combination of academic achievement, breadth of professional experience and intuition, which
enabled him to develop appropriate, new and original solutions to difficult problems, made him a
legendary figure in the world of engineering - but I gather sometimes puzzled his colleagues, who
often wondered how he so rapidly reached an understanding of complex problems and who at times
had difficulty understanding his explanations - which always seemed perfectly clear to him. (That
sounds remarkably like my own engineer father who used to set himself insoluble problems for the
sheer pleasure of tussling with the figures and who would become not a little exasperated with a
daughter who found it difficult to appreciate the ‘beauty' or enjoyment he found in working through
these seemingly impossible challenges - or to follow his explanations when trying to work through the
lesser challenges of her maths homework or the logic puzzles he relished setting me and my brothers
at the dinner table. I can hear him to this day, saying: "it's really quite simple - see".
My brothers were both better at these than I - which is probably why one initially pursued engineering
at University and the other commerce - while I headed firmly towards an Arts degree!).
Perhaps Professor McKay's son, Brian, or grandson, Andrew, could recount similar tales - certainly, I
believe his students could, as he encouraged them constantly to think beyond the apparently obvious
explanations and the accepted practice of the time - and as they struggled to understand that famous,
characteristic statement: "There is no connection between rainfall and runoff" (his way of summing up
in a brief, challenging conundrum his belief that "the phenomena are so complicated that the limited
attempts of orthodox practitioners (sic) of the art of hydrology were so far from correct that they
should be treated with great caution".)
He was, in sum, an exceptional engineer, who made a great contribution to his chosen profession, to
the development of this State and to the world of engineering. It is fitting that we recognise and
honour his legacy - and singularly appropriate that this National Engineering Heritage Landmark
Award should be made at this time, when hydrology and hydraulics, flood and tidal flows and forces and how to deal with them - are so vividly in all our minds.
I compliment everyone involved with the conferring of this Award and the organisation of this
ceremony; and I thank Engineers Australia and all involved with Engineering Heritage Australia for
their ongoing commitment to this important program to recognise our engineering heritage and to
educate and remind us all of the vital contribution that engineers make to our communities.
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