David Dale Morgan OAM

Story

DAVID DALE MORGAN came from an unlikely combination of people. A father who travelled half way round the world at three years of age with his family from Durham, England to become a farmer on the Waikato River in New Zealand. John Morgan introduced crop growing to the area & invented the first combined harvester while every other farmer stuck to dairying. He bred cavalry horses for WW1 when transport was turning to machines. John married Arani, a granddaughter of Peripi Whanatangi the chief of Ngati Koroki. Because of her high rank and land entitlement, she was held against her will, so Arani ran away to marry John at Pukeroro. From this union of a determined & strong willed couple came six children with David arriving on 3April1912. This may explain his strength of will and determination, even till the last, when he died on 5March2006.

After his marriage to Australian Jean Hall in 1938, there were numerous crossings of the Tasman until Jean\’s responsibilities in Australia meant a permanent move to Sydney. They had three children born in NZ Ð Roseann Dale[1940-], John David[1943-1947] & Janice Gaye[1946-] while Wendy Lynne[1949-] was born in Australia. Sadly Jean died from cancer in 1958. Shortly after this time David Morgan started his own earthmoving contracting company & was a foundation member of the Earth Moving & Contractors Association of NSW. David remarried Mavis Egan who died from arteriosclerosis in 1978; so in 1981 David married Jean Walter.

In later life, David & Jean loved travelling & nearly every year saw them off to some exotic place. While there, David would often climb mountains. On his 76th birthday he climbed Mt. Ngaurohoe & Mt Ruapahu the following day. He was still venturing up mountains into his late 80s.

David was very inventive with machinery. In the 1940s he designed and made a rotating clothes line and an amazingly high set of swings. Spare motor bike parts were used to make a lawn mower that only he could push through the three acres of paspalum and blackberries at Ryde. The tidy lawns around Ryde Wesley Church were a credit to his attention as was the development of the Wesley Mission Youth Camp at Arcadia in 1970s. In 1972, he donated land at Rydalmere to establish David Morgan Enterprises, for a factory to train and employ people with disabilities.

David’s first job in Australia had been at Rydalmere working with Letourneau earth moving company, where he became General Manager for the south Pacific. As part of the Colombo scheme in the early1950s, he was sent to India & SE Asian countries to demonstrate the advantages of rubber tyred equipment as opposed to conventional track prime movers. David visited Indian dam projects constructed by Super C tournapulls and ran service schools for the local Indian staff. Over several months he checked the equipment being used on the project, but was also amazed to see women, in their saris, walking gracefully while carrying heavy loads of rocks upon their heads to make the roads & dam.

Since owning his first motor bike , a Norton, David had loved machines. He enjoyed ensuring their maintenance & even teaching others to drive. Many of his family, including daughters, recall being taught to drive graders and trucks as well as cars. He wasn\’t a patient teacher, but was very thorough and his students have an accident free record. In the 1950s he worked on the construction of Cooma airport. The 50s and 60s saw the highlight of David\’s working career as he worked on the giant Eucumbene dam. American contractors Kaiser Walsh decided to use Tourna-bottom dumps. They used their own superintendents but as the tournapuls were built in Australia by Le Tourneaux, they appointed David as the Australian factory representative. A wise choice as he was always able to maintain a job availability of 98%. The final outcome of this efficiency of the Australian equipment permitted construction of the dam to be completed in record time. David taught and supervised hundreds of operators on the Snowy constructing the large earth fill dam which holds back Lake Adaminaby. The project was concluded in record time with a high safety record; an achievement of which David and the workers were justly proud.

Family life became more important to David after his first wife died & he learned to cook so he could have the family at his Pymble home for Christmas dinner. As well as teaching his three daughters & four grandsons to drive safely, he taught them all to play chess. Even in his nineties he would take advantage of his younger opponent\’s lack of concentration & beat them.

Throughout his later life he gave generously to the community through his donations and work for the Central Methodist Mission, Sydney.

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