OBITUARY

Edgar Fitzpatrick died on 12/06/2019.

Edgar Noel Fitzpatrick, known as Noel, was Director of the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for 13 years from 1971.

A farmer’s son, he was born in 1929 at Narembeen and joined the agriculture department after graduating from The University of WA with a Bachelor Degree of Science in Agriculture in 1951. That was the start of an illustrious scientific career, including important research into pastures and soil nutrition of then newly cleared land in the State’s south in the 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1963, he moved into administration as the department’s first Scientific Liaison Officer. He was appointed Deputy Director in 1969 and took over as Director in 1971, a role he held until 1984.

In 1984 Mr Fitzpatrick moved across to the Federal sphere, becoming the Deputy Secretary of the Commonwealth Department of Primary Industry and during his tenure there he helped establish the Bureau of Rural Science.

In 1988, he became the inaugural President of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. He returned to WA and continued to contribute to agriculture as Chairman of the Western Australian Meat Marketing Corporation and the Western Australian Meat Commission.

During retirement Mr Fitzpatrick wrote In Response to Need: A history of the Western Australian Department of Agriculture from 1894 to 2008, which has become a great reference source for many department officers.

Mr Fitzpatrick was elected an ATSE Fellow in 1993, and was also a Fellow of the WA division of Ag Institute Australia. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia and inducted into the Royal Agricultural Society of Western Australia Hall of Fame in 2006.

The Noel Fitzpatrick medal awarded at the annual Young Professionals in Agriculture Forum, run by the Ag Institute Australia WA division and the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, is named in his honour.

Mr Fitzpatrick died in Perth on December 6 2019.