Did You Know This Was Invented In Australia

Until the advent of international flights, Australians had to rely on their own skills, know-how, ingenuity and 'tasks for the job at hand' to fulfill the needs and requirements of their daily lives.

Until at least the 1960's travel to and from Australia, was primarily by ship, a journey depending on where one as coming from or going to would take months for a single journey.

Add in the harsh and in many places the inhospitable areas of the land, the unique flora and fauna, some of which are very deadly to humans, would make one think that Australia, especially in the early days from colonization, would be the last place on earth to live!

In those early days, since food was scarce, although sheep, goats and cattle were brought over and for a lucky few, pastoral land was found in various areas, Goulburn, New South Wales, about 120 south west of Sydney, being one of the first established.

For those early explorers, some actually had taken the initiative of learning from the first inhabitants, the Australian Aborigines, who taught these explorers, where to find water, safe grasses and berries to eat and even the local animals that could be hunted and cooked.

This became an excellent way to subsist salted meats, hard cheeses and even harder bread, which was the only known way to preserve food at the time, and was cumbersome to move, especially for the early explorers.

From the 1800's with pastoral lands being granted to settlers and soon to become a common way to produce corn, wheat, rye, barley and other grains. There was on perennial problem, almost now matter how many trees were cut down, these trees grew back with swift speed before the time of planting the next harvest.

As the settlers settled across Australia, most townships would be rather distant to one another, hence making the delivery of postage a difficult prospect.

Postmaster General James Raymond, in New South Wales, introduced the first pre-paid postage system by creating pre stamped sheets as envelopes.

Especially the northern part of the country being hot for a possible 7 months of the year. Keeping food in a state without spoiling was very difficult.

Arthur Patrick McCormick noticed that a bag thoroughly drenched in water and placed over a bottle cooled its contents, and the cooling was more pronounced in a breeze and more effective at night. The Coolgardie safe developed into a box made of wire and hessian bag sitting in water, which was placed on a verandah so that any breeze would evaporate the water in the hessian and via the principle of evaporation, cool the air inside the box. The Coolgardie safe was used by many right up until the middle of the 20th century until the advent of ice boxes and then refrigeration.

Although tree lopping and eventual burning of the stumps and roots for trees is one solution for creating farmland, Australians discovered another issue. Ploughing the fields still became extremely frustrating due to the burnt stumps and vast tree root systems, being too large to dig out.

Various stump pullers were made, yet still remained not as effective as three axemen to do the same job.

The situation was deemed so bad the South Australian Government would offer £200 to anyone whom would provide a solution. Richard Bower Smith in 1876 and an agricultural machinery apprentice and later perfected by his brother, Clarence, created a plough that had a pivot point in the middle, and when encountering a stump the plough section itself would pivot up and over the stump, by pushing forward, and a weight attached at the top would push it back down into the soil after passing the stump and allow one to continue to furrow.

It proved remarkably effective and was given the name of the 'Stump-Jump' Plough.

Some of those early creations and invention certainly started to make life easier for the first explorers and settlers and helped to create a better life for their own and many others.

For alot of these inventions, designs and new discoveries, Australia slowly didn't start to seem such a different, harsh country after all. It was a place uniquely located with unique needs that needed solutions that may have only become available by those living within its shores.

This hasn't stopped Australia being a provider of innovation. More information to come on some of these discoveries that occurred right up til 2006, of which some will surprise!