Duffy, William John

DUFFY, William John (1826–?) may have been apprenticed in the merchant marine before training in France as an engineer with Ponts et Chaussées du nord from 1840-48. After he married Emma Johnson at Islington in 1853, he migrated to Victoria where he was a land surveyor with the Victorian Board of Lands and Works and where his only son was born at Kilmore in 1858. After he moved to Queensland by 1864, he was employed at Warwick as an assistant to a well-known civil engineering contractor Joseph Martindale (c1818–1885), building bridges on the Darling Downs. Like others employed by Martindale, Duffy sued for his wages. After applying unsuccessfully for the post as engineer to the Toowoomba Municipal Council when Hugh SWANN was appointed in 1867, Duffy worked for John BOURNE on the Dalby Railway until, and despite being over-qualified, he succeeded Swann as Engineer to the Council in 1868. Occasionally he undertook architectural works. He soon moved to Victoria as an assistant engineer for Leggatt, Noonan & O’Grady, contractors for the North-Eastern Railway. After overseeing the first section of the Main Tasmanian Railway in 1873, he moved to South Australia in 1874 where he was employed by the Colonial Government: as resident engineer for the Port Pirie and Gladstone, Port Broughton and Hoyleton Extension Railways; for drainage works in south-east South Australia; and as superintending surveyor for Midland and North Midland districts, until in 1883, he returned to Tasmania as Engineer for Roads and Bridges. From Hobart he belatedly followed the example of his son, John William Duffy (1858–1938), in applying successfully for Associate membership of ICE in 1886. After he retired in 1888, he moved to Mordialloc, Melbourne where he was living, and may have died, in 1896.