George Oscar Lutz
Close family friend of our Grandmother and her siblings
The info and photos on this page were provided by Graham Witt, who contacted us in September 2013. Graham's family has a distant connection to George Lutz's sister Antonia (Tony), and he also has an interest in old engines. Further info was provided by Bob Sneddon, the son of Daisy who was one of George Oscar Lutz's daughters.
George Oscar Lutz (known in some records as Oscar Lutz) was born 26 March 1886, at Wauraltee, South Australia.
His parents were Bernhard Adolph 'Ben' Lutz (b: 29 October 1883, Kilkerran, South Australia, d: 17 July 1950, South Australia) and Mary Lillian Maud Wilson (b: 28 February 1882, Aberdeen, South Australia, d: 20 January 1935, South Australia). They had married on 3 March 1908. See the Lutz family tree [PDF - 30k]
George Oscar's grandparents were from Altenau and Zellerfeld, Kingdom of Hanover, Germany and they emigrated to Australia sometime before 1861 when their first child (Heinrich Adolph) was born.
George Oscar exhibited a steam engine that he had built out of old oil drums at the 1902 Eudunda Show when he was only about 17. His family were farm implement makers as well, so he was quite the entrepreneur by the looks of it. George Oscar and his younger brother Adolf (Sonny) built engines between roughly 1912 and 1917 in Victoria after being inventors in South Australia (see below). They were originally called Lutz and Wilson engines but were later marketed under the name Reliance.
Excerpt from Graeme R. Quick's book Australian Tractors: Indigenous Tractors and Self-Propelled Machines in Rural Australia
From an original brochure. Source: Old Machinery Magazine forum
Graham Witt's grandfather, Friedrich Wilhelm Witt, with a Lutz and Wilson engine on his farm at Mindarie South Australia in about 1918. The engine in the photo is on the wheeled carriage and the big tank on the left hand side is the cooling system. In this photo the belt going into the building would have probably driven a chaff cutter or something similar. The belts can be seen as thin lines coming from behind the cooling tank. The engines had large flywheels to maintain inertia as they were slow revving and usually very low horsepower (probably only about 8 HP) whereas a modern engine ¼ of the size would generate that.
There is a lot more info and more photos at the Old Machinery Magazine forum. Also see the Lutz family tree [PDF - 30k].
Meanwhile George Oscar had married Edith Louisa CAMPBELL (b: 1884, Richmond, Victoria) in Victoria in 1908, and they had four children:
- Edward (known as Ted) Herman (b. 12 May 1909, d. 13 July 1981)
Ted had 3 children (Phil, June and Alan). Our mother Joan Dwyer remembers that Ted was a prisoner of war at Changi, Singapore during World War II. Joan says she remembers "when he came back from the war how very thin and sick he looked, but at least he did come home". Joan says that Wal and Edith raised Ted's daughter, June (see photo). June was about the same age as Joan and they spent a lot of time together as kids. Robert (Bob), son of Daisy Isabel Sneddon (nee Lutz) says that Ted served an apprenticeship as a confectioner at Nestle's, and this helped him as a P.O.W., in as much that he made sweets for the Japanese, and got extra food off the Thai workers. Every day he had 2 raw eggs, and said these saved him in the war.
- Ronald Bernard (b. 8 June 1911, d. 4 December 1988)
Ron had a son named John.
- Daisy Isabel (b. Toogoolawah Queensland 26 July 1913 d. Hervey Bay 7 September 2003 - married in Five Dock Sydney 1938)
Daisy had a daughter and a son (Pat and Robert)
- Ena (birth date unknown, died Burwood Sydney 1967)
Ena did not marry or have children
Bob Sneddon says that George Oscar worked as head engineer at the Nestle factories at Toogoolawah Queensland (where Daisy was born) and later at Abbotsford Sydney. Bob says that Oscar learned English from his kids, but that he could really only read in German and all of the blueprints for the Nestle factory machinery were in German. It appears that the boys in the Lutz family were often good with machines. Phil was a mechanic/fitter on the Snowy Mountains scheme, Alan has an earth moving business, and Robert became a marine engineer and oil rig mechanic.
By the mid 1920s the Lutz family had become very close friends of the Phillips family, no doubt because our great grandfather Charles Edmund Phillips and his son (our Great Uncle Wal Phillips) also worked at the Nestle factory in Abbotsford. There are several photos of George, Edith and their children in our Great Aunt Bern's photo album from that period. The house in Abbotsford was a company (Nestles) house that was given to George Oscar as a bonus on the completion and commisioning of the factory. Ena and Daisy had a fruit shop in Five Dock at some stage.
George Oscar died 11 September 1928, at Tempe Private Hospital, St Peters, NSW aged only 42. Edith then married one of George's best friends, our Great Uncle Wal Phillips.
Edith died in 1973 at Burwood, New South Wales, Australia.
Back to Bern's photo album