Prof. Frank Blakey
BLAKEY, Professor Othmam Frank (Frank), ME PhD MIEAust MIStructE AMICE (1897-1952)
Civil and Structural Engineer
Othman Frank Blakey was born on November 10, 1897, at Herberton, North Queensland, to Othman Blakey and his wife Eleanor Blakey nee Shackleton. His parents were both from Bradford, Yorkshire, England and both were school teachers. His parents had arrived in Queensland from England on the ship “Duke of Sutherland” on March 30, 1885, for his father to take up a teaching appointment.
When he was 18 months old, his father, then the headmaster of the Stafford on Kedron State School, died in a railway accident. Eleanor had to care for the family’s six surviving children and was pregnant with another. By 1901 she had taken up a teaching position to help support the family.
O F Blakey attended Brisbane Central State School for Boys. In 1911 he was awarded one of the 53 scholarships for study at Brisbane Grammar School. In 1915 he matriculated, qualifying to study both engineering and arts.
In 1916 he was awarded one of 20 Open Scholarships to Queensland University. In March 1916 he was appointed as a Junior Assistant Engineer in the Postmaster General’s Department topping the assessment for Queensland. He studied engineering at Queensland University and in 1919 was one of two students to complete the examination requirements for a degree in engineering. He also won a Sir Thomas McIlwraith scholarship in his fourth year of study. He was granted his degree with first class honours in 1920. He completed a Masters in Engineering in 1924 at Queensland University but had his award ceremony at the University of Western Australia in 1928.
On graduation Blakey worked on the design of part of the Wyndham Meatworks as well as swimming pools, reinforced concrete buildings and refrigerated storage. In 1921 he spent four months in the north of Western Australia as a construction engineer on the Wyndham Meatworks, travelling back to the eastern states, from Fremantle, by the SS Dimboola in November 1921.
Blakey joined the Melbourne architects Grainger, Little, Barlow and Hawkins in late 1921 as a structural engineer working on reinforced concrete buildings. In 1924 he was working with the Building Construction Division of the Commonwealth Bank in Victoria. He then set up in private practice as an engineering consultant and was the structural engineer for multistorey buildings such as the 12 storey reinforced concrete Royal Exchange Assurance building in Queen Street, Melbourne.
On April 19, 1922, he married Barbara Lucy Gwendolen Fraser at St James Church Sydney having a son (born Victoria 1923) and a daughter (born Western Australia 1928).
In 1927 Blakey was appointed lecturer in charge of the department of materials and structures in the school of engineering at the University of Western Australia (UWA) arriving in Perth by train on May 2, 1927.
He continued with his consulting work, being the architects’ representative and structural engineer for multistorey reinforced concrete buildings such as the six storey Victoria Insurance building, St Georges Terrace Perth, tendered in 1928.
He had a passion for Rugby and was the long standing patron of the UWA Rugby Club and became president of the WA Rugby Union Association. His strong support for students’ extra curricular activities saw him design a boathouse for the UWA Rowing Club and have an open house for students on Saturday nights. He also used his home for fundraising events for the UWA Rugby Club.
In 1935 and 1936 he cooperated with architect Reg Summerhayes to prepare building bylaws for the City of Perth.
In 1932 he was Dean of Engineering at UWA and was subsequently awarded a Carnegie Corporation grant to travel to England, Europe and America. As part of this grant, he attended the British Empire Universities Conference at Cambridge in July 1936.
Blakey was promoted to associate professor and in 1947 to the new chair of civil engineering at UWA and was again appointed Dean of Engineering, holding both positions until his death in 1952. The 57 students when he joined the school in 1927 had grown to 228 by 1945.
A national councillor of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, from 1938 until his death, Blakey was its national president in 1945; he took a leading role in the Perth division and was chairman in 1936 and 1942. He was on the State branch committee of the Standards Association of Australia from 1948 and served during World War II on technical manpower committees. He was also the UWA representative on the Architects’ Board Education Committee.
In November 1950 he sailed from Perth to Europe, Canada and the United States for a year’s study leave, returning in September 1951. In December 1950 he was one of two delegates from Australia to attend the UNESCO world conference on universities with representatives from 53 countries.
He died in Perth of cancer on March 27, 1952, survived by his widow Barbara and children, Lex and Betty. Lex (Frank Alexander Blakey) graduated with first class honours in engineering from UWA before lecturing in engineering at the University of Tasmania. In 1949 Lex completed a PhD at Cambridge University with a dissertation on the ultimate strength of concrete members. In 1949 he took up a post at CSIRO in Melbourne to eventually become Chief of Building Research, a position he occupied from 1979 to 1987.
Ron Fitch, in his 2006 biography, "Australian Railwayman: from Cadet Engineer to Railways Commissioner" sums up the views of many engineering students with the statement that “Frank Blakey was the best thing that happened to the engineering school in our day”. The first professor of civil engineering at UWA made his mark on both the building landscape and the encouragement and development of students. Donations, principally from his former students, enabled the O F Blakey Memorial Prize to be established in 1955 by the Western Australian Division of the Institution of Engineers. The O F Blakey Memorial prize is awarded annually for the best prepared talk or paper read by a Graduate or student member of the Perth division on subjects related to engineering, either historical, biographical or technical.
Select Bibliography
D. E. Hutchison, Blakey, Othman Frank (1897–1952), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/blakey-othman-frank-5269/text8881, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 1 March 2019;
R J Fitch, Australian Railwayman: from Cadet Engineer to Railways Commissioner, Rosenberg Publishing (Sydney 2006);
Alec H. Chisholm (editor), Who’s Who in Australia 1947, XIIIth Edition. Melbourne, The Herald Press, 1947;
Skevington, R.J. 'Chairman's address, a brief history of engineering education in Western Australia‘ WA Division, IEAust, Perth, 1986;
Wager, J. Personal communication, 1992;
The Telegraph, 19.1.16 p7;
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 2.3.1916 p504;
The West Australian, 21.4.1927 p8;
The West Australian 4.5.1927 p8;
The West Australian 17.3.1937 p15;
The West Australian 9.12.1944 p6 available here;
The West Australian 25.11.1949 p2;
The West Australian 29.3.1952 p7;
WWA 1944 p166; 1950 p95;
‘Obit' JIEA 24, 1952, p121;
CAC.
Prepared by Chris Fitzhardinge for the centenary book 'Anything is possible' in March 2019.
