AIRPORT ENGINEER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26352, 6 January 1947, Page 4

AIRPORT ENGINEER

AMBITIOUS PLAN FOR MASCOT LIKE FATHER LIKE SON (From Our Correspondent) SYDNEY, Jan. 2. Work on the remodelling of Sydney’s air terminal, Mascot Aerodrome, is to be commenced this month. When the first steam shovel takes its first bite of earth, the man who redesigned Mascot will be.back in,his Melbourne office, working on plans for the reconstruction of other airports. . He is Dr William Bradfield, quiet rind unassuming son of the . late Dr J. C. C. Bradfield. who was chief engineer for the New South Wales Government on the building of Sydney Harbour’s £10,000,000 bridge. His son’s scheme for Mascot will probably cost £15,000,000, for the plan calls for the changing of the course of Cook’s River and the. filling-in of two and a-hal£ miles of its bed. Dr Bradfield, who is chief airport engineer to the Australia!! Department of Civil Aviation, had the plans finished long ago, for he thought about them at odd moments all through World War 11, when he was designing airpbrts for more marticil truffleDr Bradfield won a New South Wales Rhodes Scholarship, which took him to London before the war, and it was there that he found that airports were the branch of civil engineering which interested him most. He joined the staff of a famous London firm for a while, and helped design airports on Guernsey and at Birmingham. Unlike his father, Dr Bradfield takes a normal size in hats. Dr J. C. C. Bradfield ' was believed to have the biggest head in Sydney, and his hat was always safe in restaurants because the brim fell over the eyes of most men. Unlike his father, also, Dr William Bradfield likes to listen to soft music when hp is working out a design, and when he takes plans home ljis wife twirls the dials of the radio to keep up a steady flow of his favourite working music—string quartets and Viennese waltzes.