Sir George Fisher

Sir George Fisher CMG (1903-2007), mining industry executive, began work at the Zinc Corporation at Broken Hill in 1925 after having completed a mining engineering degree in Adelaide. Apart from a period in Darwin during the war, he spent many years on the Zinc Corporation production line before rising to the surface as the company's General Manager and Director in 1945. By 1952 he was a leading figure in Australian mining and moved to Mount Isa to head Mount Isa Mines Ltd. During his period as Chairman of MIM up to 1975, output increased from 1500 to 18000 tonnes per day, and he was delighted to see Mount Isa turn from a town into an orderly inland city (a colleague said of Fisher in 1959 that 'he thinks and dreams Mt Isa'). Fisher was one of the founders of the Australian Mining Industry Council (now the Minerals Council of Australia), serving as its inaugural President in 1967, the year in which his knighthood was conferred. He was President of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy three times; he was a Director of the Australian Industry Development Corporation; and he was Chancellor of James Cook University from 1971. A rich lead silver deposit at Mount Isa is named in his honour, and an annual mining lecture bears his name. Retiring with copious honours, he claimed that 'My happiest times are when I am underground . . . There's nothing I like better than to see some good ore.'

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Mrs Lily Kahan 2006
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Louis Kahan/Copyright Agency, 2024