Essington Lewis: from South Australia's Burra to BHP and Australia's arms industry supremo during World War II

Essington Lewis (facing camera), as coordinator of Australia's World War II industrial war effort, at General Motors Holden's factory in Adelaide in 1943.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Essington Lewis became one of Australia’s most powerful men during World War II when he dictated and directed Australia’s munitions industry.

Born at Burra Burra in 1881, Lewis followed his bushman father in self reliance and hard work. Educated at St Peter’s College and a sports champion (he played Australian football for Norwood and South Australia), Lewis left working on his father’s cattle station to become a mining engineer, enrolling at the South Australian School of Mines and Industries in 1901.

In 1904, he joined Broken Hill Proprietary where his work at Port Pirie smelters and on projects such as Iron Knob ironstone, impressing BHP general manager Guilluame Delprat. In 1921, Lewis replaced Gelprat. Lewis took over when the Australian steel industry was floundering, to the extent that BHP’s Newcastle plant had to shut down in 1922.

Gaining power as the first executive on the BHP board, Lewis transformed the company’s production techniques, made a shift to rigorous training of Australian (not overseas) engineering executives, and developed steel-using subsidiary companies.

Keeping a close watch on overseas trends, Lewis put a resurgent BHP on a war footing, including setting up the Whyalla shipyards, after he saw what was happening in Japan during the 1930s.

When World War II started, Lewis was given enormous unquestioned power by the federal government as director of munitions. He controlled production and choice of weapons and equipment. Much of Australia's industrial expansion after the war was based on Lewis’s techniques. Lewis influenced important post-war projects.