Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

NORMAN RICH   February 24th, 1921 - September 19th, 2022

Born in the historic West Australian wheat-belt town of York, Norman was the seventh child of the large Jewish family of Samuel Rich, who arrived in Australia c.1903 from Poland and Pearl (nee Myslis) whose parents migrated to Australia 1880 from Hebron, Palestine.  Samuel’s discovery of the potential of the mallet gum for tanning helped open up the W.A. wheatbelt. His father’s subsequent work as a wool dealer only provided a bare sufficiency for his growing family, but even though the Great Depression was at its worst, they supported 12 years old Norman when he won a scholarship for five years education at Perth Modern school, the State’s leading secondary school. He matriculated from “Mod” in 1938, topping the State list in the award of University Exhibitions in the General category.

 Inspired by the Coolgardie Goldfields Water Supply scheme conceived and implemented by the great civil engineer C.Y. O’Connor, he enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of WA but WWII broke out in his first year (1939). In 1941 he had the double blow of losing his father and his favourite brother, killed in action with the RAAF. With time spent in the Munitions Department and Engineering in the AIF in the Pacific following the Japanese retreat and aiding infrastructure recovery, it was not until late 1946 that he completed his degree studies.

From 1947 to mid-1962 he worked on Government water engineering projects in Victoria and NSW. In 1962, he went to England and worked for six years with British engineering firms in positions of senior responsibility on large international aid projects in the Caribbean, West Africa and Pakistan. He spent 4 years on the construction site of Mangla Dam, a major component of the Indus Basin scheme, the world’s largest water project of its day, which brought together top engineers from all over the world.  He finished as Resident Engineer for the Hydro Power Station which included 5 large tunnels and an outlet canal with capacity equivalent to ten times the average Murray River flow.  

He returned to Australia in 1968 with his Welsh second wife, Margaret, (he had been widowed in 1959) and their infant daughter Mairwen.  His work took him to rural areas all over the State and renewed his boyhood affinity with primary producers, whom he saw as the backbone of Australia. He deplored the “fatuous” city-country divide and vigorously defended the latter against what he considered as a parroting of misinformation and prejudice from city sources who were themselves the main beneficiaries of industrious and (mostly) efficient primary producers. 

 In 1985 he spent time in Thailand and in Indonesia as water resources advisor on Australian aid projects. He contributed to the Institution of Engineers Bicentennial book, The Engineers and From Settlement To City about ports engineers. He felt that their vital contribution to Australia’s growth, working outside the technical frontiers of their time, had been badly neglected by historians and biographers. He travelled extensively, including the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1981 where he was thankfully not detained after having his passport stolen in Moscow!

In retirement, he spent much time lobbying for improved public transport, receiving a Premier’s Award for community service in 1992. Norman celebrated his 70th birthday by walking the 42 kilometre Six Foot Track in the Blue Mountains. He won a local Council native garden competition for a garden that began as a weedy lawn. He also dabbled in collecting out-of-print Australian books, maintaining that many of the period 1880 to 1940 should never have gone out of print because they explained the development of the Australian continent and the Australian ethos better than anything written later.

Margaret’s untimely death in 1996 at 62 from breast cancer was a sad shock but he found solace in his three grandchildren, whose company he likened to “plugging in to a battery charger. Norman, with the help of his daughter and son-in-law Craig remained in his own home until the age of 101 and saw all three grandchildren graduate from school and start university.

In 2002, Norman and his younger brother Gordon commenced family research, discovering numerous maternal relatives in America and in Israel. However, the research confirmed that all their Polish father’s side with one exception had perished in the Holocaust. Norman also analysed WWI archives relating to his three Australian uncles to find that one was in the first wave at Gallipoli and had somehow survived the bungling and butchery of the Nek. Another served in the AIF in France and a third, one of the pioneers of reinforced concrete in Australia, answered the English call for qualified engineers to assist in munitions production.

Until his eyesight started failing, he was a prolific letter writer to local and Sydney newspapers, using his expertise to contribute to the political debates around transport and rural water management. He developed many computer skills that he learned and passed on through Computer Pals in his 80s. More recently, the generous spirit he used to contribute to aid projects around the world as an engineer expanded to saving his income for small, curated aid projects overseas such as greening the desert with Australian natives in modern Israel to commemorate his ancestors and the family lost to the Holocaust.

His ongoing recreational interests included an appreciation of classical music, gardening, beach swimming and watching the Sydney Swans. He outlived many close friends who he shared various interests with such as fishing, bushwalking and AFL. These outdoor activities took him to many beautiful places in NSW and interstate which otherwise he might never have visited. From the perspective developed from his international travels he maintained that being able to follow these pursuits all year round in the immediate vicinity of a large city, was something rarely matched anywhere else in the world.  He resided on the Northern Beaches of Sydney for his last 50 years and was very fond of its beaches and national parks.

Source: Mairwen Mortlock-Chapman (nee Rich, Norman's daughter)