Given the size of the Australian population, it is truly amazing how many significant inventions, across equally many fields, have come out of this country.
The earliest invention known to ancient Australia would have to be the boomerang which is an Aboriginal hunting stick. Other cultures have throwing sticks but none came back to the thrower if it missed the target.
Aviation inventions began this century with the “Black Box” recorder developed by David Warren in 1958, whose father was a victim of Australia’s first commercial airplane crash in 1926. Warren ironically was unable to develop this idea in Australia as the RAAF was uninterested and the Federation of Australian Airline Pilots declared: “No plane would take off in Australia with Big Brother listening.”
Also in 1958 the world’s first regular “'round the world” airline service began and the inflatable aircraft escape slide, which becomes a raft if the aeroplane ditches in water, was invented in 1965.
Included in Australian transport inventions are the wave piercing catamaran – designed by Sydney naval architect Phillip Hercus and the “ute” - designed by Lewis Brandt at the Ford Motor Company in Victoria, in 1934 and called a “utility vehicle”.
Australia was the first country in the world to give women the vote in 1894 and to stage the world’s first bathing beauty contest in 1920. Another first was the “Australian crawl” – the style of “over arm” or “freestyle” swimming stroke now familiar in competition swimming. Fanny Durack, using the Australian crawl, in 1912 was not only the first woman ever to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming, in the process she cut four seconds off the men’s world record.
Of the many medical developments the good old Aspro was invented by the chemist George Nicholas in 1915 and by 1940 it had become the world’s most widely used headache treatment.
In the farming community the combine harvester was developed in Victoria in 1882 by Hugh Victor McKay who called his combine harvester the Sunshine Harvester after hearing an inspiring sermon on the topic of sunshine.
Permaculture – an integrated system of sustainable environment to provide shelter, food and human habitat - was developed by Dr Bill Mollison in the 1970s. Australia has produced many superior varieties of fruit but the most famous was the Granny Smith Apple in 1868 by the orchardists Thomas and Maria Smith in NSW.
Now for those inventions that could only be known as pure Australian. Vegemite was invented by Dr Cyril Calliste although the name Vegemite and the initial idea was by Fred Walker. This peculiar Australian foodstuff has posed the ongoing question in every Australian household at one time or another - can you really taste the difference between Vegemite and Marmite in a blindfold test??
The flexible bag inside a wine cask was first developed by Thomas Angove of South Australia in 1965 and this design has now become almost universal. And lastly the good old “Hills Hoist” was devised in 1945 by Adelaide motor mechanic Lance Hill. The Hills Hoist quickly became and remains a fixture in Australian back yards.
There is no doubt that many of these Australian inventions have changed the lives of people for the better not only in Australia but worldwide.
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