The First Decade – the birth of the tractor

By Ian M. Johnston, Agricultural Historian and Author

The dawning of the year 1900 heralded a decade of anticipation, anxiety and evolution for Australia. Matters of great moment were unfurling. The most significant of these was a Royal Proclamation decreeing that the Commonwealth of Australia would come into being on 1st January 1901. With much less fanfare and indeed only scant recognition, a small contingent of Australian Boer War volunteers continued to forfeit their lives for Mother England in the distant Transvaal. Meantime the Great Australian Drought was devastating pastoral and farming lands for its sixth year and would continue to do so for a further twelve months. William James Farrer was on the eve of releasing his new “Federation” drought and rust resistant wheat strain, which by 1910 would increase the national wheat yield from eight to 13 bushels per acre.

With such dramatic events taking place during the First Decade, historians tend to overlook the coinciding emergence of a far reaching new technology, destined to reshape Australia’s economy for all times. This was the birth of the agricultural tractor!

During the latter part of the previous century, steam energy had been the only alternative to the horse, mule or bullock power. Prestigious farm machinery manufacturers such as Heinrich Lanz of Germany, John Fowler of England and Jerome Increase Case of America had offered a broad range of steam powered stationary engines, portable engines and traction engines. These were however expensive machines affordable only by prosperous large land owners or major agricultural contractors. The traction engines in particular were inefficient heavy bulky contraptions with a rapacious thirst for clean uncontaminated water plus an ability to consume vast quantities of coal or wood fuel. They took an hour from being fired-up to the production of adequate steam pressure and were prone to bogging (often hopelessly so) in wet ground.

Tractors (as distinct from steamers) could not and did not evolve until reliable internal combustion powered engines became available. The precursor of these was the discovery of petroleum fuel in 1859 by Edwin L. Drake of Pennsylvania.

One of the earliest examples of a farm tractor sold commercially and that actually “worked”, was a crude four wheeled contrivance built by an American named John Froelich in 1892. It featured a single cylinder Van Duzen engine rated at 20 h.p. Other American manufacturers, often already involved in the production of steamers, introduced prototype tractors powered by petrol or oil engines, around the turn of the century.

Across the Atlantic in Britain, the Hornsby Akroyd Company of Lincolnshire introduced its Safety Oil Traction Engine with a single cylinder engine designed to operate on kerosene. Like the emanating American machines, the Hornsby Akroyd was a heavy weight, with all the accompanying disadvantages. In the meantime a bicycle designer named Dan Albone of Bedfordshire, somewhat prophetically saw the practicality of a lightweight tractor capable of replacing a single draught horse. In 1903 Albone introduced his lightweight Ivel three wheeled tractor to the world farming scene.

Whilst all this engineering research was taking place in the Northern Hemisphere, the nucleus of an Australian tractor industry was being developed in Victoria and South Australia.

Alfred Henry McDonald commenced business in Flinders Street, Melbourne, in 1903. Assisted by his brother Ernest, his company designed and manufactured petrol engines specifically for driving electric generators. In 1903 this was indeed advanced technology! Twelve months later A.H. McDonald & Co. moved to larger premises in Hawthorn where plans were drawn up for the production of a petrol powered agricultural “self propelled machine”. In 1910 the company relocated yet again, this time to a brand new factory and foundry facility at Richmond.

McDonald unveiled the first of a long line of farm tractors in 1908. Known as the AE, it was powered by a 20 hp two cylinder petrol engine of his own design and its introduction marked the birth of the Australian tractor industry!

In South Australia the brothers Norman and Felix Caldwell amazed an elite audience of prominent agriculturists when in 1907 they demonstrated, at the Roseworthy Agricultural College, a 30 hp tractor equiped with four wheel drive and a mid mounted 10 disc plough. Remarkably, the plough could be raised out of the ground by a power lift device. This tractor proved to be the prototype for a range of highly sophisticated tractors that would appear early in the second decade of the century.

It has been established that at least two Ivels, two Hornsby Akroyds plus a Saunderson were imported from Britain. Interestingly, the Saunderson was purchased by the South Australian Government for the purpose of evaluation. Following two seasons of testing the South Australian Minister of Agriculture declared there was no future for tractors in Australia!

Another arrival in Australia was the very first model of a tractor produced by International Harvester known as the Friction Drive. It had been transported from Chicago and put to work in Queensland. Other tractors from overseas soon followed and by 1910 a small but increasing number were working on Australian farms.

The irreversible and sweeping changes to the nation’s agricultural industry had begun. Giant strides would follow in the second decade.

[Reproduced from: A Century of Classic Tractors with permission from Ian M. Johnston, Agricultural Tractor Historian and Author]

Believed to be the oldest surviving tractor in Australia is this 1903 Ivel (pictured), discovered and restored by Norm McKenzie of Cumnock, N.S.W. It has a two cylinder horizontally opposed petrol engine.

(Photo copyright Ian M. Johnston)