Eevitic of Heoiews, 119/06. 



Go Ahead, Australasia 1 



307 



ing the tools they were asked to give, but have ever 

 been endea\'ouring to produce what would 

 improve the position of the Australian farmer, and 

 make him able to compete on more than equally ad- 

 vantageous terms with the worlds growers. The 

 constant watchfulness and never-tiring activity of a 

 group of agricultural implement makers have been 

 second ojily to the agriculturist in the develop- 

 ment of Australia, and, indeed, they have been an 

 absolutelv necessary factor in its progress. We could 

 give many illustrations of our argument, but perhaps 

 the most striking is that of the Stripper Harvester. 

 With the modern Harvester of the " Sunshine '' 



more modern reaper and binder. These only cut 

 the grain, but after the sheaves were thoroughly 

 dried in the stocks it had to await the arrival of 

 the threshing machine or, in more primitive times, 

 it was trodden by oxen or beaten with the flail. The 

 Stripper Harvester is purelv an Australian inven- 

 tion. To Mr. Ridley, of S.A., belongs the credit 

 of first devising a machine to strip the heads of 

 wheat from the straw in the field. This was as far 

 l)ack as 1843. Some twentv-five years later, the 

 idea of a complete Harvester — that is, one that 

 would not only take the grain from the ear, but 

 separate the chaff as well — was evolved. Mr. Rid- 



a.-^ic^^rr,;^:.-^, ■■ 





Hilf-amile of Sunshine Harvesters leaving Ballarat for the North-East. 



pattern, invented by Mr. H. V. McKay, a farmer 

 starts his machine on his crop of wheat, and takes 

 the grain from the machine, clean, wholesome and 

 without chaff, bagged and all ready for the market. 

 The " Sunshine " Harvester does not take long to do 

 it either. At Gulnare, S.A., on the farm of Mr. D. 

 F. Allan, last year 202 bags of grain, sewn up and 

 ready for market, were taken off one Harvester be- 

 tween sunrise and sunset, whilst in the Wimmera 

 district of Victoria it is quite a common thing for 

 a "Sunshine" machine to harvest 15 acres per da v. 

 Compare this with the old-time methods of harvest- 

 ing — the sickle, the scythe, the horse-mower and the 



ley, with several other inventors, endeavoured to 

 materialise the idea, and the South Australian Go- 

 \ernment offered a premium of _j{^40oo for a suc- 

 cessful exhibit. Over thirty competitors entered for 

 the prize ; fourteen brought their machines to the 

 testing-field, but they all came short of the require- 

 ments, and the premium was withheld, only a smalt 

 amount being allotted to the more praiseworthy at- 

 tempts. 



It was during the har\est season of 1884 that the 

 first successful Stripper Harvester was made by Mr. 

 McKay. As a boy in his teens on his father's farm 

 he recognised how unsatisfactory the old method 



