William Henry John Slee

Aged 19, he sailed into Melbourne, on 20 December 1855 aboard the Chilean brig Pedro V from Valparaiso via Tahiti.

Along with a Norwegian shipmate, Neils Hertzberg Larsen, who Anglicised his name to Peter Lawson, he left ship there, attracted to the Ballarat gold rush.

The two partners led a knockabout miners' life over the next decade, lured around to new goldfields, but without much result.

Eventually Slee and Lawson made their way to NSW, mining first at Lambing Flat, then at New Pipeclay (now Eurunderee, New South Wales).

Slee had earlier moved on to the new goldfield at Grenfell, writing Lawson to join him, where their quartz reef mining claim, named 'The Result', was also unrewarding.

In 1870 he was active in agitations to promote mining development by obtaining government rewards for discoverers of new goldfields.

Large numbers of inexperienced people flocked to the gold diggings to try their luck, many using mining methods which were unsafe or impractical.

Slee approached the task by adroitly balancing the competing perspectives of mine managers, investors, and practical miners.

With increased use of diamond drills for mineral exploration and sourcing artesian water, he gained such expertise that in 1885 he was also appointed NSW Superintendent of Diamond Drills, a program that under his guidance made valuable developments, particularly as to engineering and public health.

[6] Commencing that same year, 1896, he actively advised and assisted several geological expeditions of The Royal Society that had been appointed to investigate coral reef structures by boring at Funafuti atoll.