John Ridley's wheat reaper, The Stripper, saves early South Australian agriculture

Thousands of John Ridley's The Stripper wheat reaper machines were built.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

John Ridley has been credited with saving the young colony of South Australia in the 1840s by inventing The Stripper wheat reaper.

By 1843, the colony was in financial trouble but it had an expanding wheat crop – that would make South Australia the early granary of Australia – exceeding the workforce needed to harvest it by the old hand methods. Ridley produced a machine that enabled crops to be reaped mechanically. Combs and beaters swept off heads of wheat, so that binding, carrying and stacking were avoided.

Although Ridley won the prize offered by Agricultural and Horticultural Society for the invention, others believe that Mount Barker farmer John Wrathall Bull was first to come up with the idea, claimed as a world first.

Arriving in South Australia in 1839, Ridley bought land to farm at Hindmarsh, near Adelaide city centre. He also took over the flour mill of the South Australian Company and installed the colony’s first steam engine (a Watt’s beam) able to cut wood and grind meal. Ridley, an energetic lay church preacher, refused to take out a patent, or received a reward, on his wheat reaper invention, allowing South Australia to reap the full benefits.

Thousands of Ridley reapers were built and, along with the stump jump plough, it was one of South Australia’s most significant inventions. In gratitude, South Australian colonists presented a silver candelabrum to Ridley, who returned to England in 1853. The candelabrum is now at Waite Agricultural Research Institute.

Ridleu is honoured by the memorial scholarship at Roseworthy Agricultural College, memorial gates and a pavilion at the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society's showground at Wayville and Adelaide suburbs of Ridleyton and Ridley Grove.