John Ridley's reaper and Smiths' plough among 1840s/50s boosts for South Australian agriculture

John Ridley's mechanised reaping machine, invented at Hindmarsh, South Australia, in 1843.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

The early challenges of farming in South Australian conditions generated an impressive batch of mechanical invention firsts.

The first significant innovation was a response to the emergency of not having enough labour to harvest the colony’s wheat in the early 1840s.
In 1843 at Hindmarsh, flour miller (and preacher) John Ridley developed a mechanised reaping machine – The Stripper – that, by 1857, harvesting 50% of its wheat.

Although Ridley won the prize offered by Agricultural and Horticultural Society, others credit Mount Barker farmer John Wrathall Bull as the inventor of what has been claimed as a world first.

In 1876, Richard Bowyer Smith and his brother Clarence on the Yorke Peninsula invented a stump-jump plough that could cope with the problem of mallee stumps on paddocks. James Winchester Stott from Alma in the mid north is credited with a similar invention in 1877, plus a cultivator, slasher, scarifier and double-furrow plough.

The first man to make winnowers in Adelaide was John Stokes Bagshaw who set up a workshop in 1838. He became famous for his farm tools, especially his hand-operated winnowers.

Writer, preacher and inventor David Unaipon, born at Point McLeay Aboriginal mission, is credited with creating the first straight line motion shearing machine. In 1909, he developed and patented the handpiece that became the standard in woolsheds across the country.

In 1915, Alf Hannaford of Riverton made the first wheat machine that wet pickled seed wheat with copper sulphate to protect against a fungus disease called bunt. He later changed the machine to enable dry pickling of wheat against smut.