Norman Selfe (9 December 1839 – 15 October 1911) was an Australian engineer, naval architect, inventor, urban planner and outspoken advocate of technical education. After emigrating to Sydney with his family from England as a boy he became an apprentice engineer, following his father's trade. Selfe designed many bridges, docks, boats, and much precision machinery for the city. He also introduced new refrigeration, hydraulic, electrical and transport systems. For these achievements he received international acclaim during his lifetime. Decades before the Sydney Harbour Bridge was built, the city came close to building a Selfe-designed steel cantilever bridge across the harbour after he won the second public competition for a bridge design. Selfe was honoured during his life by the name of the Sydney suburb of Normanhurst, where his grand house Gilligaloola is a local landmark. He was energetically involved in organisations such as the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts and the Australian Historical Society. As president of the Board of Technical Education, he fought consistently for the establishment of an independent system of technical education to serve the needs of a rapidly industrialising society. He was acknowledged upon his death as one of the best-known people in, and greatest individual influences upon, the city of Sydney.
Family background and apprenticeship Selfe came from a long line of inventors and engineers. Both sides of his family came from Kingston upon Thames in London, where one grandfather had owned a plumbing and engineering works. His father Henry was a plumber and inventor, whose high-pressure fire-fighting hose was displayed at The Great Exhibition in London's Crystal Palace in 1851. Selfe's cousin Edward Muggeridge grew up in the same town but moved to the United States in 1855, restyled himself Eadweard Muybridge, and achieved global fame as a pioneer in the new field of photography.
The Selfe family landed at Sydney's Semi-circular Quay in January 1855, when Norman was 15 years old. One of the reasons they emigrated to the colony of New South Wales was to enable him and his brother Harry to undertake engineering apprenticeships without having to pay the heavy premium required by large firms in London. They initially resided in the nearby Rocks district in a small house that had previously been the first Sydney home of Mary Reibey, a former convict who became Australia's first businesswoman. Selfe's parents had high expectations of their children, particularly of Norman, whose ability in mathematics and draughtsmanship was apparent from a young age. The brothers earned a reputation for innovation during their youth, and were the first to construct a velocipede in the country. Selfe very quickly began his career as an engineer, taking articles of apprenticeship to the ironmaster Peter Nicol Russell, at whose firm he worked in several departments and eventually became its chief draughtsman. He would remain there until 1864. In 1859, when PN Russell & Co expanded to a site in Barker Street near the head of Darling Harbour, Selfe drew up plans for the new works and the wharf, and oversaw their construction. In an address to the Engineering Section of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1900, Selfe recalled his work for Russell's:
While there [I] prepared plans for numbers of flour mills, and for the first ice-making machines, designing machinery for the multifarious requirements of colonial industries, many of which (such as sheep-washing and boiling down) no longer exist on the old lines. While at Russell's, Selfe made several innovations in the design and construction of dredges for "deeping our harbours and rivers" – something of crucial importance to industry in early Sydney. He later recalled the success of Pluto, one of his dredges purchased by the government:
[I]n this there were several novelties introduced, and among them, the ladder was lifted by hydraulic power instead of by a chain from a winch ... The day of the official trial ... was a proud one for [me], because during the course of the little festivities which followed their formal approval and official acceptance, [head engineer] Mr Dunlop pointedly remarked that "as she was all right, the credit must be given to his boy in the drawing office".
Inventor and engineer Selfe achieved international recognition in 1861 when leading British journal The Engineer published illustrations of his designs for one of the first refrigerating machines. One such machine was installed behind the Royal Hotel in George Street in Sydney's ice-works – one of the world's earliest commercial refrigeration plants. The decades following Selfe's arrival in Australia were watershed years in the development of refrigeration technology, and he was closely involved with its evolution. The introduction of refrigeration to the colony revolutionised farming, allowing the expansion of settlement, and made possible the export of meat and dairy products. In Sydney itself, refrigeration changed commercial practices and led to the eventual demise of city dairies. Selfe became an international authority on refrigeration engineering; he wrote articles and eventually a definitive textbook on the subject, published in the US in 1900.
After leaving Russell's, Selfe went into partnership with his former employer James Dunlop. They designed and built major installations for the Australasian Mineral Oil Company, the Western Kerosene Oil Company and the Australian Gas Light Company. In 1869 Selfe was appointed to the senior post of "chief draftsman and scientific engineer" at Mort's Dock & Engineering Company in Balmain. In this role he oversaw the design and construction of the mail ship SS Governor Blackall, personally commissioned for the Queensland government by the Premier Charles Lilley in 1869. The Sydney-built but Queensland-owned ship was an attempt to break what was later described as the "capricious monopoly" of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company on coastal trade and mail delivery from England. However, it ultimately caused the political downfall of Lilley as he had undertaken the contract without consulting his colleagues.
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