From Ashes to Agriculture Trivia Quiz

Answer: Merino

Australia is the largest wool producing nation in the world and the strength and reputation of its industry can be attributed to the work and foresight of John and Elizabeth Macarthur who purchased their first flock of Spanish merino sheep in 1796. Previously the fibre being produced by Australian sheep had been very coarse and of low quality.

The Macarthurs were very impressed with the thick, fine, fleece that the merinos could produce, and the bonus was that they were able to adapt to and thrive in Australia's hot conditions.

The best move that they made was to refuse to crossbreed these merinos, a practice other farmers happily engaged in. The advantage they gained in doing so arrived with the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s and with it came a skyrocketing demand for wool.

The high quality of wool that John & Elizabeth produced fetched a premium price and made them extremely wealthy. Nowadays there are four basic strains of merino raised in Australia, the Peppin being the most important, the South Australian, the Saxon and, though their numbers have now reduced significantly, the Spanish merino. Breeding and selection continue to be the foundations of Australian merino and, to this end, DNA testing, embryo transfers and artificial insemination are now standard procedures for Australian breeders.

Answer: A shearing machine

Wolseley may not have produced the first shearing apparatus but his was the first to use it commercially and successfully. It helped to modernise the wool industry. His primary aim was to create a machine that would remove the whole fleece rather than the small pieces that were being cut by using blade shears.

This would have the effect of doubling and, in some cases, tripling the value of the wool. Fred's initial experiments began in 1868 and he secured a number of patents for his initial devices.

Whilst they all worked well he still couldn't set it to remove the fleece as a single unit. By 1886 he created a model with a "cog-gear universal" that worked to his satisfaction. He pitted a local shearing champion, Dave Brown armed with blade shears, against a young man from Sudan, Hassan Ali, using the new unit. Wolseley's machine proved to be superior on so many levels and, after adopting some suggestions from local shearers, he immediately began manufacturing and establishing a successful business venture.

Answer: Stump Jump Plough

To encourage this expansion the South Australian Scrub Act of 1866 allowed farmers to lease land cheaply with an option to purchase it at a price of one pound per acre after 21 years. Cutting the mallee scrub was hard work but not difficult. Removing the stump (called grubbing) however, was.

At approximately two pounds per acre it also proved to be costly. A number of solutions were put forward and tried but none were anywhere near as effective as Smith's stump jump plough, which, like a number of great inventions was discovered by accident. Smith was ploughing his land when his machine struck a thick stump and the bolt holding the ploughshare snapped off.

Instead of coming to a halt the plough jumped over the obstacle and continued to work.

A blacksmith by trade Smith soon created a plough that had a pivoting blade which enabled it to rise and slide over obstacles, instead of jamming, and then used weights to bring it back into a furrow. The first model, while workable, proved to be too heavy.

His brother Clarence then took over the project and within 12 months had produced single and triple plough models that would revolutionise farming through southern Australia.

Answer: The crop capacity had outgrown the workforce

Early attempts to grow wheat in Australia provided slow progress. Trying to replicate conditions prevalent in their former homelands early settlers sought the moist coastal areas. However, the soil here was of poor quality for grain and the rainfall proved to be too high.

They began to seek pastures inland where the conditions were drier and the winters significantly milder. The conditions were almost perfect and soon grain crops boomed and the country soon found that it did not have the workforce to cope with this expansion.

A mechanical solution was needed. The first mechanical harvester was produced by flour-miller John Ridley who had a passion for books and science. Ridley didn't enter the Corn Committee's competition as he was close to completion with his own creation and didn't wish to surrender any rights he may have been entitled to.

A month after the competition was announced Ridley had already built his first machine, had it pass its first cropping test and began negotiating a contract for manufacture. Controversy arose soon after when a local farmer, John Bull, who'd created a similar unit, claimed his idea had been stolen.

A cloud hung over Ridley's reputation for many years after his passing until a scientific report was published in 1985 that confirmed the accusation as unjust.

Answer: Sugar

Sugar cane was introduced to Australia with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. There were numerous attempts to try and turn it into a successful commercial enterprise but all of these came to nothing until Captains Buhot and Hope moved north to establish a plantation on the outskirts of Brisbane in 1862.

At the same time the Queensland government was extremely keen to generate export growth and were being very generous towards any venture that would lead to the establishment of large scale sugar plantations.

The sugar industry at that time was very labour intensive and in the harsh tropical environment it also proved to be physically demanding. To make it more challenging for plantation owners the transportation of prisoners from Britain also ceased at this point, which also meant that cheap (and compliant) labour had dried up. Owners turned toward the Pacific Islands, primarily the New Hebrides, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands for workers.

While a large number of these came of their own free will there are also numerous tales of coercion, blackbirding and even kidnapping.

The Federal government passed legislation in 1901 to cease the practice.

Answer: Federation

Australia's Federation came into force on 1 January 1901. The country's wheat crops had suffered terribly from the disease rust to such an extent that in 1884 flour millers were forced to import wheat to satisfy their requirements. Yet again, the errors of their forebears were coming into play with farmers remaining steadfast in their belief that what had worked in their homeland would also work here. European wheat varieties, to be fair, did work satisfactorily in Australia but only in the moist coastal plains.

The issues here were availability of land, what was available was not necessarily of good quality, and the higher rainfall. Once they moved inland the same grain became vulnerable to disease. Farrer, who had given up a medical career due to injury, took over the management of a small property in Queanbeyan and began a crossbreeding programme using various wheat varieties from around the globe.

He used Indian varieties which he felt were drought resistant and matured early which he crossed with Canadian Fife which he argued gave better flour in his effort to create a "strong" wheat.

He succeeded in producing a wheat that not only out-yielded most of the older types but provided good heads and short but strong straws ideal for Australian harvesting methods. Legend credits him with producing a rust resistant strain, however, this was not quite the case. What he did find was a breed that matured early and in doing so beat the rust season.

Answer: Journalism

Whilst Australian conditions proved excellent for raising beef, thanks to the tyranny of distance, the country's farmers were at a distinct disadvantage when it came to the export of their product, in particular against the United States with their easier access to Britain. Harrison's discovery whilst working at his printing presses, led to him creating the world's first ice-making machine in 1851, which was soon followed by a patent for a refrigeration system based on compressed ether vapour. In 1873 he won an award for proving that meat was still edible after being kept frozen for a number of months. With this as his driver he prepared a shipment of frozen meat to be sent to the United Kingdom.

Here he made a critical blunder. Instead of going to the expense of building a refrigeration system on board the ship he had the meat packaged in ice.

The ice didn't last, the meat spoiled and it would take many years before confidence would be restored in frozen food. Harrison, for his part, died penniless but his legacy would prove to be a significant one.

He is viewed as the "father of refrigeration" and a number of landmarks and awards in Australia have been named in his honour.

Answer: Stripper Harvester

Settlers soon discovered that Australia possessed vast tracts of land that were suitable for growing grain. The issues were that technology was unable to maintain pace with the rate of farm development. Successful harvesting of grain was reliant on strippers that were drawn along by horses and winnowers that needed to be operated manually.

Not only were these methods slow, exposing the crops to disease and changes in the weather, they were also costly. During the 1880s the Australian government put forward a range of incentives to create a single unit (combination harvester) that could strip, thresh, winnow and bag the grain at the same time. Two men, who would become great rivals, emerged with successful machines; James Morrow who patented his harvester in 1884 and Hugh McKay who patented his a year later. McKay continued to make the better improvements to his machine, now called the Sunshine Harvester, and, once the farmers saw how it cut costs and enabled them to also expand their production, sales took off.

Despite long periods of drought at the end of the 1890's McKay was able to prosper with the manufacture of his machines (at least) doubling every year in the period between 1895 and 1901. Agencies were soon set up in every capital city on the mainland and lucrative markets were established in grain rich countries such as South Africa and Argentina. McKay passed away in 1926 leaving an estate worth almost 1.5 million pounds. In 1930 his company merged with Massey Harris and now trades as Massey Ferguson (Australia) Limited, the McKay name disappearing in 1955 when the remaining family shares were bought out by Massey Harris.

Answer: Arthur Howard

Fascinated with engineering at an early age, Arthur was watching his father use the tractor to haul a disc plough across a paddock and figured that this was creating a massive loss of power. His initial experiments saw him rig a drive direct from the tractor's engine through to a cultivator bar bearing notched discs were promising.

He was saving power and the earth was not being densely packed in the manner that his father's methods did. The issues he was having were that the discs were spinning too fast and threw the soil out too far.

He got around this by removing the disc ploughs and creating L-shaped blades that he attached to flanges and then spaced out evenly over the rotor bar. As brilliant as his invention was he did have some issues in selling it to the world - the First World War and then the Great Depression.

He persevered and by 1938 had set up agencies in the USA, Britain, South Africa, Spain, Germany, France and Italy. His equipment is now being exported to over 120 countries around the globe.

Answer: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)

The CSIRO began life as an advisory council in 1916 but suffered from a lack of funding due to resources being directed by the government towards Australia's commitment to World War I. The Science & Industry Research Act in 1926 established the CSIR (later to be the CSIRO) which saw the government devote wider resources and install broader powers into the operation.

The following are some of the breakthroughs they have achieved: the Siro-Mark, made from specialised pigments mixed with an emulsion of lanolin, is a specialised branding liquid that can be easily cleaned from wool during scouring.

This replaced standards such as henna, tar and paint which cost the industry dearly, permanent crease trousers, which provided fabric vendors with a marketing advantage, a self twisting yarn system was created in the 1960s that improved spinning times ten-fold, the Sirolan-BAP, a shrink proof process for woollen fabrics and a mechanical yarn splicing system was created in 1989.