William Henry John Slee

William Henry John Slee, FGS (1836–1907), was an Australian geologist, mines inspector, and mining warden.

More usually known as W.H.J. Slee, or sometimes John Slee, he was born Wilhelm Heinrich Johann Slee on 3 May 1836 at , Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany, a son of Jacob and Regina Slee. There is uncertainty about his educational background, although he was highly articulate in both German and English. As a teenager he became a seaman. Aged 19, he sailed into Melbourne, Victoria, 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). In 1866 Lawson married there, his first son, Henry Lawson, novelist and poet, being born the following year at Grenfell. 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 1869 Slee married at Grenfell to Emma Nelson, daughter of John Luke Gore and Mary Ann Nelson, of English and Irish origin.

W.H.J. Slee first came to public notice during his years at Grenfell. In 1870 he was active in agitations to promote mining development by obtaining government rewards for discoverers of new goldfields. He became so favourably well known that in September 1872 he was appointed manager of a goldmine at Emu Creek. With that, the partnership between Slee and Lawson was dissolved. In 1873 the Lawson family returned to Pipeclay, while the Slee family remained in Grenfell. Four children were born into the Slee family between 1870 and 1876, one of which died in 1873.

Government inspection of coal mining in NSW had commenced in 1854, but other mining activity had been mostly unregulated. Large numbers of inexperienced people flocked to the gold diggings to try their luck, many using mining methods which were unsafe or impractical. The increased mining activity and a general dissatisfaction with the administration of mining led to the Mining Act, 1874 and the establishment of the Department of Mines on 1 May 1874. That same date, W.H.J. Slee was appointed the first Inspector of Mines for NSW, being responsible for industrial safety and enforcing mining safety codes.

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