77. John Lysaght Australia

In February 2024, I wrote a post about Port Kembla (post 31), after learning that one of the fishermen who I meet from time to time on the Shorncliffe Pier, whose name is John, had also worked there. Coincidentally, both of us had been employed by the same company, John Lysaght Australia Ltd (JLA). I’m not sure how long John had worked there, but I do remember that my employment there had spanned 17 years, from 1963 to 1980. Throughout that period, JLA had been a good company to work for, and, in this post, I’d like to tell you a little more about the company itself and about my work experience in Port Kembla.  

 The story of JLA goes back a long way. It began in 1856 in England, when a civil engineer, named John Lysaght, who had been born in Ireland, bought a small galvanising business in Bristol, for the purpose of manufacturing corrugated iron sheets. The fact that the sheets were corrugated ensured that they were a strong and flexible building material, which the company could then export to Australia, as well as to other countries.

Galvanised iron (which is steel protected by a zinc coating) was a product that was ideally suited for Australia’s harsh conditions. It was durable and affordable. Moreover, it was relatively lightweight and stackable, and easily transportable over Australia’s long distances, even “on the camel’s back”. 

Galvanised corrugated iron became very popular, and, in due course, it became more economical to manufacture it here in Australia, rather than to ship it in from England. The English company eventually established a subsidiary here in Australia and, in 1921, built a steel rolling and galvanising plant in Newcastle, in New South Wales. This was followed, in 1939, by a second steel rolling and galvanising plant in Port Kembla (the Springhill works).

Also, around the same time, JLA and Armco (American Rolling Mill Company) built a second new plant in Port Kembla (Commonwealth Rolling Mills), to manufacture “motor body and other high-grade sheets to meet all Australian requirements”.

To summarise, when I joined the company in Port Kembla, in 1963, there were 2 large factories in operation there, Springhill Works and CRM, and two of the managers there still had the Lysaght family name, Charles Lysaght, the General Manage, and John Lysaght, who was Production Manager.

When I started my employment there, I did not know much about the company’s history and nothing at all about the role which the company had played during the Second World War. It is an interesting story and worth mentioning, particularly the company’s support of the war effort by manufacturing a gun, the Owen sub-machine gun, an Australian invention. This was a gun designed for tough conditions and highly popular with Australian soldiers, who nicknamed it the “Digger’s Darling”. It was said to be “reliable, even in muddy conditions”.

The Owen Gun was invented by Evelyn “Evo” Owen, who was the neighbour of Vincent Wardell, the chief engineer at the Port Kembla factories. Together, they managed to convince the JLA Board and John Curtin, Australia’s Prime Minister at that time, that JLA should manufacture this new Owen gun at the Springhill plant. Consequently, during the war, JLA produced 45,000 of these guns, plus approximately half a million magazines for the Australian army.

During the war, the company also sent large quantities of corrugated sheets back to the U.K., to be used for building air raid shelters and, in another interesting development, women began to be employed in the Port Kembla factories, while the company’s Newcastle factories developed bullet-proof steels for use in Australian army vehicles.

Immediately after the war JLA changed back to manufacturing its traditional galvanised products, but soon, due to a growing demand in both the domestic and the export markets, it began developing and producing a wide variety of new steel products. By 1970, JLA had achieved a total annual steel production of one million tons.

In post 31 (“Port Kembla”) I mentioned the working environment at JLA and, also, the factory buildings, which were very large, many hundreds of metres long. I remember that huge gantry cranes were travelling at speed above my head. Large coils of hot rolled steel were thundering into the heated acid baths of continuous pickle lines, where they were descaled, cleaned, trimmed and recoiled.  A new five-stand cold reduction mill amazingly reduced the steel thickness of the coils and extended their length, from 1200 to 6000 metres. To make the galvanised steel products, the coiled strip passed through the very long continuous hot-dip zinc coating lines. There were three of them when I was there, coming into operation in 1961, 1964 and 1966.

JLA provided its thousands of employees with excellent sporting facilities, such as soccer and cricket fields, tennis courts, squash courts and “lawn bowling greens”. Having these facilities so very accessible, I did play squash and tennis there but never tried out cricket or bowling. The club house, which was known as “The Orb”, served as a meeting place for employees after bowling matches and during other important occasions. I spent many hours there, attending retirement functions, prize-giving evenings and other celebrations. Volunteers manned the bar and looked after the facilities.

JLA also had its own health fund (the Lysaght Hospital and Medical Club), established in 1952. It provided financial assistance to its members, over and above the assistance provided by the Government.  I joined this fund back then and am still a member today, after more than 60 years. In 2006 it became an “open fund”, no longer restricting membership to employees and it changed its name to “Peoplecare”. It is now a major health fund in Australia.

JLA employed around 6000 people, which was a large number by Australian standards at that time, but it did not operate in the way most other companies did. It was my impression that the staff and factory workers felt that they belonged to a family company which looked after its employees.

I think back to my 17 years at JLA, and to the people I worked with, with a great deal of affection. They gave me, a young Dutchman starting off in an unfamiliar country, a “fair go”. They were supportive and willing to teachme the “Australian way” of doing things. I was very fortunate to have been able to make some good friends and I’m happy to say that those of them who are still with us, after 50 or 60 years, I continue to stay in touch with.

O.P.

P.S. The next post, written by Patrick, is a fiction story: “If only this could come true”, and will be published on Sunday morning, 3 August 2025.