Albert Brady
BRADY, Albert Barton, MInstCE (1856-1932)
Albert Brady, civil engineer, architect and departmental head, started his pupilage as an architect in 1872 with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Co. and spent seven years on railway work, two years with a consulting engineer on gasworks, waterworks and drainage and four years as engineer to sanitary authorities in East Anglia before emigrating to Queensland in October 1884.
In March 1885 he joined the Railway Department, then very active in main line construction; in 1887 he was made the first Assistant Engineer for Bridges and in 1889 was invited to be the Engineer for Bridges in the Department of Public Works. The great floods of the early 1890s brought many urgent jobs, including the repair of the Fitzroy River suspension bridge at Rockhampton, and the replacement of important bridges at Brisbane, Maryborough and Gympie. The new Victoria Bridge at Brisbane was the third-longest metal-truss road bridge in Australia when it was opened in 1897; it was replaced in 1969 but the Burnett River Bridge and the Kennedy Bridge, both at Bundaberg are similar in design and still in service. His Lamington Bridge at Maryborough, the first reinforced-concrete bridge built in Australia, is one of the notable series of low-level bridges designed using lessons from the floods.
In August 1891 the architectural and the engineering branches of the Department were amalgamated under Brady and in April 1892 he was confirmed in the position of Government Architect and Engineer for Bridges, but it was not a happy department, and in 1900 it was investigated by a Royal Commission consisting of the Chairman of Committees and four back-bench members of Parliament. There was remarkably frank evidence from some of the 107 witnesses; Brady received some criticism, but the Commission accepted his opinion that the Department should be drastically reorganized, and on 1 February 1901 Brady was given the additional position of Under Secretary, and he directed the Department for the next twenty-one years. Although the Department built many bridges in the late 1890s very few were started afterwards, partly as a result of the increasing strength of the rural local authorities, but apparently no need was seen for road bridges, nor was any money available. The only two important road bridges, a low-level bridge near Yelarbon on the Dumaresq River, and a steel truss on the McIntyre River at Goondiwindi, were built on the state border with New South Wales.
Before 1914 the Department built many new buildings for the Commonwealth, including the fine customs houses at Townsville, Mackay, and Rockhampton, the large post offices at Rockhampton, Ipswich and Stanthorpe, and the Enoggera army camp. Many schools were built and there were new needs after 1910, when the Government established technical schools, the university and the first state high schools. The former Executive Building (finished in 1906) and the Administration Building (completed in 1920) show the transition to a new style of official architecture. By 1920 the Department had many other responsibilities such as the supervision of the electric light and gas companies, the inspection of machinery and scaffolding, and the supervision of local authority loan works, the most important of these being the construction by the Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board of sanitary sewerage for Brisbane where there were great difficulties, especially in an attempt to drive a low-level tunnel along an ancient bed of the Brisbane River. In 1921 the Government referred the project to a Royal Commissioner, who absolved Brady from ·blame.
Although trained as an architect and claiming that he always advised on "arrangement, style, and materials", it appears that his senior assistant, Thomas Pye, supervised the detailed design; Brady's main professional interest was in engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers publishing four of his papers between 1895 and 1903, and awarding him Telford Premiums and the Crampton Prize for two of them. He was ambitious, but his contemporaries had no doubt about his ability as a designer and he was an excellent administrator. It was fortunate for Queensland that at a time of rapid change, the Department was led by a man with great professional ability, wide experience, and able to work in many fields. Brady retired on 1 February 1922, his sixty-sixth birthday, and he moved to Sydney where he died on 31 May 1932, predeceased by his wife but survived by a daughter and seven sons.
References:
Eminent Queensland Engineers Vol 1 is available here.
ABO, Vol. 7, pp. 385-6;
Min Proc. Inst. Clv. Engrs, Vols 121 (1894-5), 124 (1896), 141 (1900), 151 (1903);
R.S.Brodribb, 1Road Needs', Qld Dlv. Tech. Papers, I.E. Aust., Vol. 10, No .19 (1969);
V&P (LA Qldl, 1900, Vol.3, p. 979, 1913, Vol. 3, p. 611, 1921, Vol. 2, p. 924.
