Joe Bertony

Bertony's wife was a pianist and physiotherapist at Hornibrook. They had no children and she died in 2016. Bertony was a lover of French food and dined out regularly in Sydney's restaurants. He also held a keen interest in electric vehicles and helped to mentor young engineers. Bertony died at his home in Sydney on 7 April 2019.

After the Opera House, Bertony worked on other projects in Sydney including the Roseville Bridge in the Middle Harbour and the Pheasant's Nest Bridge over the Nepean River. Bertony donated the calculation sheets from his time on the Opera House to the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, and they are now held as part of the Powerhouse Museum collection. Bertony later ran calculations to prove that an earlier, more ambitious model for the opera house, one which had flatter concrete sails, had also been technically possible. In the 1990s he worked with a Scottish company to design a vertical axis wind turbine design and at the time of his death was working on a Scottish wind farm scheme.

During the early 1960s Bertony worked on the construction of the Sydney Opera House. The building's design with a number of large "sails" made up of 22,194 pre-cast concrete segments proved challenging to construct. The segments were to be fixed in position with epoxy resin and Bertony determined that a temporary steel "erection arch" falsework would be required to support the structure in the temporary condition. Bertony settled on a mobile telescopic truss system and completed the 30,000 necessary calculations by hand in six months. The structure, which had no flat elements, was complex, and the margin of error required was 0.5 inches (1.3 cm).

Bertony moved to Australia in 1953 to work at the uranium mines at Rum Jungle, Northern Territory. At the time Australia operated a scheme that allowed European citizens permanent residency if they secured work in the country for two years. Bertony was given a job at Hornibrook, a construction company famous for its work on bridges, that satisfied this requirement.

Towards the end of the war, in 1945 with US forces approaching, the prisoners from Buchenwald were marched to the German-Czech border and loaded onto a cattle train. They were then taken to a remote spot to be executed by shooting. Bertony anticipated this and escaped the train in the company of another man. The two men endured ten days in the snow with no food and clad only in their thin camp uniforms. They survived to be rescued and became firm friends for the rest of their lives. Bertony was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government for his actions during this escape.

Joseph Bertony (4 March 1922 – 7 April 2019) was a French-born Australian engineer. Trained as a naval architect, he served in the French Navy during the Second World War and, after the Fall of France, as a spy for the French intelligence services. Bertony was captured twice by the Germans and imprisoned in concentration camps and successfully escaped both times. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his bravery and emigrated to Australia after the war. Bertony worked as a civil engineer and played a key role in designing the temporary works that allowed construction of the Sydney Opera House sails. This entailed making more than 30,000 manual calculations with an accuracy of 0.5 inches (1.3 cm). Subsequent computer checks showed that he had not made a single error. In later life he worked on wind turbine projects and as a mentor to young engineers.

Bertony was born in Corsica, France on 14 March 1922. His mother died soon after the birth and he was sent by his father to be brought up by an aunt and uncle. Bertony developed an interest in mathematics and studied naval engineering at Saint-Tropez. Following the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the French Navy. Whilst there Bertony's intelligence was recognised and he was recruited as a spy.