Vale – Laurance Hazlewood
Laurance (Laurie) Kendall Hazlewood, MA (Syd), MA (ANU), 9 October 1923 -
28 June 2012, was a senior Geographer at Natmap, Canberra.
Laurie attended The Fort Street High School in Sydney and later served in
2 Field Survey Company during World War 2 before joining Natmap.
The following details of Laurie’s Wartime Army Service (1942-46) has been
kindly provided by Charlie Watson:
A growing undergraduate interest in geography
caused me to seek service in a Topographic Survey Unit once I turned 18 in
October 1941. But not until May 1943 did I end up in the 2nd Field Survey
Company, O.C. Major Clews, by then based in Childers, Queensland.
Straightaway I went to Iron Range, Cape York
Peninsula, with No. 2 Section, taking part in 1:253,340 scale mapping by an
inland group using astrofix and pace and compass traversing until we were
recalled to Iron Range at the end of the year.
Next year (1944) I went back after leave in
Sydney to the by then largely deserted Iron Range camp, until most of my
section flew in from working at Merauke, in (Dutch) New Guinea, on 1 September.
Then I went out again on an astrofix party working south of the 1943 'strat'
mapping of the Weipa sheet until we all were recalled to Company HQ, now at
Ingham.
In October (1944) we of No. 3 Section left
Townsville for Lae, where the topographers worked marking up aerial photos,
until I was flown with some others to Torokina, southern Bougainville. A number
of us took ship for home leave, disembarking at
The remainder of my time before discharge on
24 January 1946 was spent filling in time at the 13th Australian Field Survey
Depot in Lane Cove, surrounded by stacks of topographic maps, ancient and
modern, mostly working on the two University subjects I was allowed to study by
correspondence.
Laurie will be missed by all who knew him.