Australian Dictionary of Biography

Portrait of Walter Hughes by Graeme Inson

Courtesy of Christopher Hughes

Walter Laurence Hughes (1917–1999), engineer, industrialist, and government adviser, was born on 9 September 1917 at New Lambton, Newcastle, New South Wales, middle of three sons of Edward Mervyn Hughes, a Victorian-born engineer and marine surveyor, and his New South Wales-born wife Margaret Irene, née Oldham, a schoolteacher and a devout Anglican. From childhood Walter was known as ‘Bon’ to his family and friends. He attended Maitland Boys’ High School (1929–33), where he became dux and captain of the school. Aged sixteen, he entered the University of Sydney (BSc, 1937; BE, 1939), residing at St Paul’s College. He played grade cricket and rugby for the university and represented the college in rugby, cricket, billiards, and rowing, sharing the college boat with his friend Gough Whitlam.

Graduating with the university medal in engineering, Hughes was awarded the New South Wales Rhodes scholarship for 1939. In August he sailed for England, but World War II broke out when his ship was in the Great Australian Bight. Disembarking, he spent the war years in South Australia as a naval architect and draughtsman with the Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd (BHP) in its Whyalla shipyard. He always regretted not seeing active service (as his brothers did) but his talents were well used in the strategically important shipyard.

Hughes finally went to New College, Oxford, in 1946 and completed his DPhil (1950) in only two years and one term. His thesis on marine propeller blade vibrations was classified until the 1960s. He found time for rowing (winning an oar in the New College Torpids boat) and cricket. While he played in the ‘Authentics,’ Oxford’s second XI, for two seasons, he did have one game in the firsts, which gained him an entry in Wisden (1948); with characteristic humility, he reported to a friend his undistinguished performance in the match. On 28 April 1950, in a Church of Scotland ceremony at Clark Memorial Church, Largs, Ayrshire, he married Elizabeth Muriel Baird, a vivacious young woman recently discharged from the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Her boisterous Scottish charm complemented his more subtle, but good-humoured worldliness.

In 1951 Hughes returned to BHP at Whyalla as officer-in-charge of ship construction. Three years later he was appointed general manager of Walkers Ltd at Maryborough, Queensland. Walkers built ships and manufactured railway rolling stock, machinery for sugar milling, and other heavy equipment, particularly for the mining industry, casting components in its integrated foundry. With the main plant at Maryborough and a branch at Mackay, the firm had accumulated more than eighty years' experience in heavy industry and was the small city’s main employer.

The nearly three decades Hughes would spend with Walkers as general manager (1954–75), managing director (1975–81), and chairman (1978–81), were the major part of his life's work. Under his guidance, the company diversified and developed a strong export market to countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. He travelled widely to promote overseas sales and visited China (1978) and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain (1979) on trade missions with Doug Anthony, the deputy prime minister and minister for trade and resources.

Walkers built thirty-four ships under Hughes’s direction. In the early 1970s, however, with the prospect of an end to government subsidies and growing competition (especially from Japan), the shipbuilding operation became increasingly unprofitable. A catastrophic flood in 1974 seriously damaged the shipyard and the board resolved to close it down. Although he was a party to the decision, Hughes felt it keenly, particularly its effect on the city, in which he was held in high regard, and on the workers, with whom he enjoyed a strong relationship. He had become known respectfully, affectionately, and almost universally, as ‘Doc’ among the company’s employees, whose numbers fluctuated between about 600 and 1,100, and many of whom he knew by their first names.

Hughes embraced union demands for a standard redundancy agreement for all workers below management level and, for foremen and others not covered by such agreements, he ensured they were offered a position elsewhere in Walkers. When the company won a contract to construct electric trains for the Queensland government in 1976, he established a new factory and encouraged the re-employment of many former shipyard staff to work on the rail cars. This contract proved significant for the company, which manufactured trains for many years.

In 1980 Walkers faced hostile takeover bids from the interstate companies Australian National Industries Ltd and Clyde Industries Ltd. Fearing a loss of local ownership and control, Hughes, quoting the Biblical Book of Joshua, warned ‘we in Queensland will end up hewers of wood and drawers of water’ (Hughes, pers. comm.). The takeover was averted through State government intervention and a merger in 1981 with another Queensland engineering firm, Evans Deakin Industries Ltd, itself a takeover target. Hughes became a director of Evans Deakin that year and remained on the board until 1995, when he retired to Brisbane.

Although Hughes had devoted much of his energy to Walkers and Maryborough, his knowledge and experience brought him national prominence in government and industry bodies. He was a member of the Australian Universities Commission (1965–77) and Council (1977–79), the board of the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (chairman 1977–80), and a part-time member (1978–82) of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s executive. In addition, he served on national manufacturing and shipping bodies, including the Australian Manufacturing Council (1977–81) and the Australian Shipbuilders’ Association (chairman 1972–73). He was a director of MIM Holdings Ltd (1973–88) and (from 1971) the Maryborough-based timber milling company Hyne & Son Pty Ltd.

For his services to shipbuilding and export industry, Hughes was appointed CBE (1980). He received the Jack Finlay national award of the Institution of Production Engineers (1972); the A. G. M. Michell medal of the Mechanical College, Institution of Engineers, Australia (1983); and an honorary doctorate of engineering from the University of Newcastle (1989). Whitlam’s tribute on his leaving St Paul’s in 1939 had anticipated his achievements:

Walter’s bent was practical, but he was too wise to condemn what was outside his immediate province. With a disconcerting discernment he would question the keepers of other fields and endeavour with considerable success to obtain an insight into what they guarded. He would not scoff but he would not be fobbed off with an answer incomprehensible or illogical. (Pauline 1939, 14)

Having begun his career as a shipbuilder and designer, Hughes proved to be among the country’s most respected leaders in the fields of engineering, export industry, and higher education. Golf, gardening, classical music, and literature occupied his leisure time. He died at Auchenflower, Brisbane, on 15 April 1999, the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, a grim day for shipbuilders. Following an Anglican funeral, he was cremated. His wife, their son, Christopher, and daughter, Jacqueline, survived him.