and actions, must combine to make Mr. Morgans a champion of the gold-mining industry in this colony. He is a leader in experience and by right of talent. His advice, assistance, and co-operation are eagerly sought and heartily given. His charity and courtesy render him popular among the working men, and his fine conversational powers, his gentlemanly and dignified bearing, spontaneously call forth goodwill of all goldfields residents. Frank, yet dignified, discreet and sincere, this gentleman is esteemed as a friend by rich and poor.
[Since the above sketch was written (in 1896) we are happy to state that the Government has amended the mining laws in such a manner as to give Mr. Morgans and those who agree with him more satisfaction. At the general election to the House of Assembly in May, 1897, Mr. Morgans was elected by a large majority for the Coolgardie constituency. It was only after considerable agitation that he was led to allow himself to be nominated. It is certain that his invaluable experience and ability will be extensively availed of in Parliament.]
STEPHEN L. GÖCZEL,M.E.
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Photo by STEPHEN L. GÖCZEL, M.E. Greenham & Evans. |
THE life of this well-known exponent of science, whose scholastic achievements are ineffaceably impressed on the goldfields development of Western Australia, needs no lengthened preamble or prologue to enlist attention and attraction. The name serves recall by various mental associations memory-images of his many felicitous exploits, and the splendid benefits he has conferred upon the colony. By that inductive skill which is born of logical and scientific attainments, he has constituted himself one antecedent of this national auriferous prosperity
Mr. Göczel was born in Hungary in 1856. While still young be had undergone the severity of an advanced education, both at Vienna and Freibourg seminaries. This classical instruction German educationists wisely make compulsory on the basis of its utility for the easy manipulation of cumbrous scientific layers which the student may subsequently superimpose on his plastic mind. At the end of his curriculum he proceeded to the science halls of Vienna. He became bent on acquiring a full systematic course of study on all scientific subjects that are consummated in the phrase—" Mining knowledge." Chemistry, mineralogy, and metallurgy were first embraced with an alacrity conceived of a scientific nature, and their interesting problematic solutions, reactions, and experiments writ large with indelible letters on his impressionable mind.
Still impatient of finite limits being assigned to his extension and intension of knowledge, he entered the Schemnitz Academy of Mines, where he was confident that valuable insight would be gained into sunken, intricate departments of science. Here he completed his student labours, and looked back with no small amount of glee at the elaboration of his scientific building which his own handicraft had in these years erected. Resting on the sound foundations of classics grew up an edifice of knowledge, whose every stage seemed in its rapid progress to annihilate the artistic beauty of the former, and whose culminating copingstone did copious grace to a homogeneous whole. The degree M.E. could not be more meritoriously assigned.
From there he passed to the Freibourg Academy of Mines, where his mental horizon widened with the expansion and extension of many avenues of knowledge. His midnight lucubrations signified the accumulation of a rich and complex store of scientific information. The multilateral data of knowledge gleaned with a scrutinising eye and a keen observation from experiments successfully carried out in laboratories satisfied his investigations as to the existence of a cause or agent for every consequent. Experimental proofs of cause and effect gradually induce the scientific mind to break down the barriers between priori and prosteriori, thereby finding every "ens" a cause that lies within the boundaries of a world of sense and experience.
His débût in the commercial world was witnessed before the scenes of Hungary. Trusting in his capabilities, which, if recognised, would force attention, he set up a private practice within its precincts. A little patience, a few opportunities and a careful and successful management of the same, made his door to success stand ajar. Clients who sought his learned report saw in him a man of scientific attainments, whose accuracy and comprehensiveness could not but originate from a judgment as calculating as it was keen. He was now known by responsible men of high intellectual status, who were not slow to avail themselves of his able assistance. He obtained the managership of some silver and copper mines in Hungary. His supervision here proved that his volume of acquisitions was no more reference department. They permeated the mechanical routine of practice by a labyrinth of passages.
With fair empirical qualifications he left Europe to extend the scope of his research and utility on the broad auriferous fields of Australia. He arrived in Sydney in 1888, and on a foreign shore he tightened the strain of endeavour to amass for himself a practice
