Lt Col Robert F Skitch

Robert Francis Skitch (Bob) was born in Perth on 2 July 1934, the only child of Robert Mason Skitch, a Forestry Department officer, and Mabel Madeline Skitch (née Magowan). He grew up in Collie, in the south-west of Western Australia, where he was known as “Junior”. In January 1945, when Bob was ten, his father was killed on the Mungalup Road.

He and his mother then moved to Perth. He attended Kent Street High School in Victoria Park, where he passed the Junior Certificate in all eight subjects, and afterwards worked on railway survey parties. He did his national service with the Royal Australian Navy in 1953 and 1954, serving as a stoker aboard the corvette HMAS Fremantle.

His mother died on 5 February 1955. Nine days later, on 14 February, he enlisted in the Army. After recruit training at Kapooka he attended the School of Survey at Balcombe, the start of a twenty-six year career in the Royal Australian Survey Corps. As a soldier-surveyor he worked in north Queensland, the Gulf country and New Ireland.

While stationed at Charters Towers he met Wendy Weight, a student nurse from Tenterfield, New South Wales. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in July 1961, and he and Wendy married at St Philip’s Church, Sydney, on 26 August 1961. They had four children: Sarah, Robert, Christopher and Elizabeth.

As an officer he raised and commanded the 1st Topographical Survey Troop, formed at Randwick, Sydney, in 1965. From May 1966 to March 1967 he led the troop’s detachment in South Vietnam, serving with the 1st Australian Task Force at Nui Dat. He was later posted to the British Army’s 84 Survey Squadron in Singapore, attended the Australian Staff College, and was senior instructor at the School of Military Survey. In 1975 he commanded Operation Sandy Hill, which completed the Corps’ 1:100,000 mapping of Queensland north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

“Sandy Hill was perhaps the largest mainland operation ever undertaken by the Corps.”

From “A personal reflection” in The Army Years, Part 5: In Command.

From 1977 to 1980 he was Commanding Officer of the Army Survey Regiment at Fortuna, Bendigo, where he brought Automap 1, the first computer-assisted mapping system used in Australia, into productive use. The Regiment’s first computer-assisted map was published in 1978. He resigned his commission in February 1981 and settled in Brisbane, where he spent nineteen years in the Queensland public service. As Deputy Director of the Division of Mapping from 1983 he redesigned the State’s 1:25,000 topographic maps and introduced hill shading to the Amazing Queensland tourist maps, which went on to win cartographic awards. He edited the Queensland Surveyors Bulletin and was president of the Australian Institute of Cartographers. He was a member of the Rotary Club of Nundah for 35 years, twice as its president, and was made a Paul Harris Fellow.

Between 1999 and 2018 he wrote the memoirs published in this archive, drawing on memory, letters and his own records. Wendy died on 26 September 2025, after 64 years of marriage. Bob died at home in Chermside, Brisbane, on 8 July 2026, six days after his ninety-second birthday. He is survived by his four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Military Service Record

• Royal Australian Navy (National Service): service number NS 2923
• Australian Army (Royal Australian Survey Corps): service number 5/2897

Promotions are shown in bold.

Elsewhere on the web

• Virtual War Memorial Australia: his entry in the national memorial to Australians who served.
• Royal Australian Survey Corps Association: history of the Corps he served in from 1955 to 1981.
• The Skitch Family Archive on YouTube: recordings from the family archive.