Dave Macey
MACEY, Dave, BE(Hons) (1944-2020)
Dave was born on 29th December 1944. He grew up in Scarborough and attended primary school there before achieving “qualification exam” allowing entry to Perth Modern School for high achievers. From there he moved to UWA graduating with a BE (Hons) Mechanical Engineering in 1966.
He was initially a research engineer with the Sugar Research Institute in Mackay, QLD, solving noise and vibration problems in Sugar Mills. In 1978 he moved to London, England, and worked for Lloyds Register of Shipping, doing stress analysis for the certification of North Sea oil platforms.
In 1979 Dave joined Woodside Offshore Petroleum as Certification Engineer for North Rankin A. He later joined the Dom Gas team within Woodside LNG Pty Ltd. as Project Engineer reviewing the Main Contractor’s work. He soon gained an extensive knowledge of WA oil production. He joined Bond Petroleum in May 1985 and stayed with the company as it later became Hadson Energy and then Apache Energy. Whilst at Bond Petroleum Dave was quoted in a magazine feature as follows:
- “What I like about this company is that you can do things differently. You don’t have to follow the beaten path. Because it is a small company and there are only 6 of us making the decisions we can sit down together and get things done. That is really satisfying.”
In 1991 Dave was appointed as Hadson’s Project Manager for the Harriet Gas Gathering Project. This project included the installation of a 70 km long 12 inch pipeline from Varanus Island to Mardie Station on the Australian mainland. A major cost of the project was the stabilization of the pipeline in very shallow water in a cyclone prone area. Dave had this idea that the pipeline could be laid directly into a pre-cut trench on the seabed. To prove this, he carried out trials utilizing a Liebherr crawler, probably a large backhoe, and converted it into a machine which would cut a grove in the seabed using a rotating cutting wheel. The machine did indeed cut good long trenches into areas of solid seabed. The rigid steel pipeline though just would not find its way into the trench due to small irregularities in the trench wall and the stiffness of the concrete coated pipeline. Unfortunately, the trials were unsuccessful. Typical of Dave, this was very innovative thinking and would have been extremely cost effective had it worked.
Another challenge of that project was to find a passageway through the tidal mud flats covered in mangroves. Mangroves are sacrosanct and even though there are thousands of kilometres of them along the north-west shelf coast line they were not to be disturbed. Dave was sure that he could find a gap in the mangroves wide enough to install the pipeline through and went to Mardie Station to explore the coast line himself looking for a suitable entry point. What he did find was a ship wreck partially buried in the sand which he reported to the authorities. The ship was not identified but was measured as 20 m in length and was named “Macey’s Wreck”. Dave’s name lives on through that discovery. (See reference below).
Macey’s Wreck Unidentified, Maritime Archaeology Databases, Western Australian Museum
In 1992 after many years with Bond/Hadson/Apache Dave moved to Paris, France to join an engineering consultancy.
Returning to WA the following year he set up Macey Engineering Consulting and worked variously for the Goldfields Gas Transmission Pipeline as Construction Manager, for Apache on their Stag Oil and Wonnich Gas Projects and for OMV and Santos on their Patricia Baleen Gas Project and Mutineer Exeter Oil projects.
Dave was struck with bowel cancer in 2005 but he continued to work. He spent time supervising engineering work done in New Plymouth, NZ for a major offshore field development in China.
Following his untimely death in June 2020, many former work colleagues joined Dave's family and friends at Karrakatta Cemetery on 9th July. There we farewelled a highly respected engineer, left-field-thinker, and generous friend. He will be sorely missed.
Author: Keith Binns, May 2023.
