Current Chairman of MBGS, our longest serving employee and the Bryan in McElroy Bryan Geological Services.
John Bryan graduated from UNSW with First Class Honours in 1965 and spent a year working as a geologist at the Geological Survey of NSW. Much of the year was spent in the field in Central Western NSW, mapping and compiling 1:250,000 geology maps including the Cootamundra, Nymagee, Cobar and Manara Sheets. Working with Cliff McElroy and Toby Rose, John also compiled the Sydney 1:250,000 Geology Map which is still in publication.
A desire to undertake further study of the Palaeozoic strata in the Central West resulted in John applying for a Commonwealth Scholarship to do a PhD, which he commenced in March 1966. While in the field, based at Parkes, John received a call from Cliff inviting him to join an expedition to Antarctica to map the Devonian/Permian/Triassic sedimentary strata in the Dry Valley area of the Transantarctic Mountains. The Field Party comprised Cliff, Toby and John. Departure was December 1966, and in the months prior, there was plenty of training to do. Rock climbing skills were developed, abseiling practice was gained at various sandstone cliffs around Sydney and plenty of long walks with a suitably weighted backpack improved general fitness. The Antarctic expedition was sponsored by the US National Science Foundation, beginning aboard a Super Constellation aircraft from Christchurch, NZ on December 30 and, 10 hours later, landing on the glacier-ice runway near the US McMurdo Base on Ross Island. A total of 5 weeks was spent camped out in the Dry Valleys, mapping the strata and delineating, and naming stratigraphic units in the sequence.
In 1967 John continued his PhD work and became a tutor at the School of Applied Geology at UNSW. This led to John becoming a Lecturer in Stratigraphy, to the detriment of his PhD progress. The position at UNSW involved supervising Honours students and lectures to undergrad classes, where Kerry Whitby was a student. This was a challenging and poorly paid position, so when Cliff asked John, who had a young family at this time, to join his new consulting geology company in 1970 there was little delay in giving a “yes” answer.
In July 1970 John commenced at Clifford McElroy and Associates (CMA) with the title of Technical Manager. John’s knowledge of the Lachlan Geosyncline was put to immediate use with the preparation of a Prospectus (IPO) for Mt Hope Minerals, a company seeking to explore for base metals. Don Emerson, a respected geophysicist, was then on the Mt Hope Board and their work located a number of interesting prospects near Cobar and south of Nymagee. Much of CMA’s early work was with coal exploration areas and mines operated by Austen and Butta (A&B) in the Southern and Western Coalfields. In 1972, A&B became partners in a coal exploration programme in Canada near Chetwynd, BC – the Sukunka Project. A fatal plane crash in the Rocky Mountains involving some senior A&B mining engineers occurred in August that year and CMA’s Graham Wallis, who had been managing the exploration, was heavily involved with the recovery of bodies and the police enquiries. John assisted Graham by taking over the Sukunka exploration responsibilities. Exploration drilling at Sukunka was located at sites up in the mountains where Geoff Jordan and the other geologists were challenged not only by the grizzly bears, moose and other native wildlife, but also by the terrain, the French-Canadian drillers and a very difficult Canadian Rocky Mountain winter. Part of John’s job was to manage a crew of A&B coal miners from Lithgow, NSW who were attempting to develop a bord and pillar mine to produce large coal samples that could be supplied to potential customers around the world. An outcrop of the Chamberlain Seam, high up on a hillside, became a trial underground mine. The roof of the seam was faulted and fractured in this region and progress in the mine was slow, but coal did get mined and the were no accidents in the process. The field season ended in November with an Aussie style BBQ of Caribou and Moose steak – and Fosters Beer!!
Coal lost a bit of its shine in the mid-1970s so it was quiet at the office. John took this opportunity to complete writing his PhD; he closed the door and took the phone off the hook for 3 months to finish the job. John was awarded his PhD in early 1975.
Things had become rather busy by this time and John did not make it to his graduation ceremony as he was somewhere in the field, in North Queensland or in PNG. John spent a few months in the foothills of the PNG highlands, mapping and sampling coal in the Gulf of Papua, west of Port Moresby. It was an interesting project using a team of local Papuan tribesmen from a village called Baimuru. Flying in and out of Baimuru from Port Moresby was always challenging and, at times, downright scary. John took on the adventure and dealt with mosquitoes, the threat of malaria, the rugged terrain, the humidity and carried a gun at all times – mostly to deal with snakes for the bare foot locals (usually death adders) and to hunt for food at the end of the day with the locals.
Towards the end of the 1970s John became Managing Director of the company and the company name also changed to McElroy Bryan & Associates (MBA). In 1979 John took up his new role and started to find out how hard it was to juggle the number of geologists with the number of jobs. MBA had managed the exploration of the Capcoal area in the Bowen Basin with John as Exploration Manager. From the granting of the area in 1976, the German Creek Mine opened in 1981, first with the open cut operations. The longwall mine followed and was the first modern longwall underground mine in Queensland. MBA assisted Capcoal with the exploration there until the mid-1990s and made many long-lasting contacts with the Capcoal managers and mining engineers. The underground mine still operates there but shallow coal resources were depleted some time ago.
In 1988, When Cliff retired, the business transferred from MBA to the current company – McElroy Bryan Geological Services (MBGS). In the 1990s and through into the 2000s John was busy running the company, working on projects including in the Hunter Valley at Dartbrook, Bengalla, Cumnock, Narama, Ravensworth; Western Coalfield at Baal Bone and Running Stream and an interesting job in Indonesia at Kaltim Prima auditing the resource.
In 1997, John elected to withdraw from his role as Managing Director and planned to spend time travelling and attending to his pine forest at Oberon. So, after 27 years, it was time for Kerry Whitby to take over the reins and he is still running the company. John found time in his semi- retirement to join the Board of Gloucester Coal, a role that continued until 2009, when Gloucester was taken over by Noble Group for more than A$500 Million – a good result for the shareholders. Before the takeover John also ran some of the exploration at Gloucester and was instrumental in finding another coal seam, the Clareval Seam, that had been previously undetected at the base of the coal measure sequence. After drilling a few drill holes close to the margin of the basin, John drilled other holes in a structurally complex area where there was some seam repetition of the already thick Clareval Seam. A number of those exploratory holes had as much as 40 m of semi-hard coking coal, which added about 10 Mt of low ratio coal to the resources tally.
The semi-retirement sort of worked, with much time spent at Oberon pruning pine trees with grandchildren and numerous overseas trips were enjoyed with John’s wife, Joy, and like-minded friends, including being invited on ocean cruises to Antarctica to provide geological lectures on the continent. But, for most of the time since 1997, John has continued working on various coal projects and has used his experience and knowledge to help complete some major assignments. He still enjoys his geology work and is not about to stop anytime soon, even though he has just celebrated his 80th birthday. John is currently on the board of directors for Pembroke Resources. In recent years John worked on geological support to Malabar Coal and other projects in the Hunter Valley, still occasionally gets called up to help on a little deposit in Tasmania and is always available to support our project staff with geological interpretation and advice. Throughout John’s career he has been a mentor to many geologists, provided clients with frank opinions, has an ideal mix of enthusiasm and practicality and is an amazing source of geological information. 2020 was the 50th anniversary of MBGS and it was very satisfying for John to still be a working geologist after 50 years and to have a place to come and enjoy his work.