A final word for Engineer's Week

by Larry McNutt
Head of Informatics and Engineering at ITB

Thanks to all our contributors during the week Mohamad, Richard and Garret. It provides just a small flavour of the many exciting opportunities that exist in the field of engineering. Off course since the economic downturn many graduates have opted to emigrate to other countries to seek their fortune. Not a new vista for Irish citizens I’m afraid. In fact if you had opted to travel to Australia a 100 years ago you may have been surprised to see an Irish engineer capturing the headlines in the National and local press.

Charles Yelverton O’Connor was an Irish engineer originally from County Meath who had the vision and audacity in 1896 to suggest that a water pipeline should be built from Perth to the West Australian goldfields of Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. This was a distance of over 500km uphill through the desert to serve the rapidly growing gold mining communities.


The project was an outstanding success and enabled the goldfields of Western Australia to prosper and subsequently underpin the strength and prosperity of the Australian economy as we know it today. Unfortunately, O’Connor died tragically shortly before the water flowed from the huge Mundaring Weir Dam in Perth 500km to the Kalgoorlie reservoir.

The transformative power of Irish engineering continues in the 21^st century and you have a great opportunity to be a part of it!