Joseph John Gillio died from blackwater fever at Kampala, Uganda, on May 5th, 1943, at the age of 70.
He was Italian by birth, but was brought up in Queensland, and became a naturalized Australian in 1904. In 1889 and 1890 he attended a course at the Technical School, Turin, returning to Australia to obtain practical underground experience at mines in Queensland. In 1891 he was appointed battery manager with the Queenslander Company, where he remained for three years. For another three years he mined on his own account in the Northern Territory of Australia, and then worked for a year with the Cosmopolitan G.M. Company at Pine Creek. From 1897 to 1899 he again worked on his own account in Western Australia, and in the period 1899-1901 was a member of several exploring expeditions in the desert of Central Australia.
From 1901 until 1904 he held various mining appointments in Western Australia and Victoria, and in 1905 left Australia to take up a post as technical adviser to the Fondation de la Couronne in the Congo Free State. Three years later he was appointed manager of mines in the Nizi district of the Kilo Region, and in 1911 became manager of all the mines in the Moto Region, in the Belgian Government’s Kilo-Moto Mines. He continued in this work until 1917, when he came to England, and shortly afterwards went to Nigeria, where until 1920 he managed various small mines affiliated to the Naraguta Extended Company, Ltd. Mr. Gillio returned to the Belgian Congo in 1921, and served as manager, chief of the research department, and controller of prospecting of the Société des Mines d’Or de Kilo-Moto. In 1938 he retired and settled in Kampala.
Mr. Gillio was a Member of the Société des Ingenieurs Civils de France, and was elected a Member of the Institution in 1917.
Vol. 53 Trans IMM 1943-4, p.430
