Fascinating additional information has surfaced about the Scottish mining engineer , writer, eugenicist and stamp collector, John Herbert Curle , who in l939 hired a White's taxi to drive him 1200 miles from Darwin to Mount Isa, Queensland , for two shillings a mile .
A newspaper account of the Australian record making journey made the suspect claim that Curle had travelled 2,000,000 miles in 40 years.
However , this blog discovered that when Curle wrote an unusual book - Eskimo Pie- published by Methuen, London, in l942, a reviewer described him as a modern Marco Polo, one of the most travelled authors of the day .
He had much to say about humankind all over the globe and the direction in which it seemed to be heading ,
The book presented "arresting pitures" of people and places in many lands , including Britain, Germany, America , the Far East and Australia .
In respect of Australia, the reviewer said Curle admired the country and new it intimately .
Curle's wide ranging observations about America included the fact that it had become the manufacturing hub of the world , was hooked on oil, and was reaping the benefit of being a melting pot of peoples , against the beliefs of eugenicists
It was a surprise to read that Esko Pie had been dedicated to G. A. Richard, of Brisbane.
Online research revealed this was George Alfred Richard, an Australian metallurgist, 1861-l943, who studied assaying, chemistry and metallurgy at the Ballarat School of Mines . He went on to become a major influence in large scale mining operations in Australia.
He worked on Victorian goldfields and then joined the large Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company in Queensland, becoming its general manager .
In 1901 Richard toured Australian, North American, European and South African plants, examining copper-smelting and iron and steel processes.
Money from Mount Morgan helped set up the Anglo- Persian Oil Company which became British Petroleum in l954.
According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography , Richard was interested in the Queensland militia, technical reading , education and billiards.
He had joined the volunteer militia in late 1887 as provisional captain and was widely known as Captain Richard, especially after he led volunteer troops during the shearers' strike of 1891.
Richard presided over the 1899 and 1910 meetings of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers at Rockhampton and Mount Morgan; in 1910 he gave an erudite presidential address, 'Statistics and economics'. He was a strong and active supporter of the Mount Morgan Technical College and advocated a centralized Queensland School of Mines.
(Taxi. Mining. Curle.)
