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With humble beginnings in Scotland it is Australia’s own HV McKay who is known for heading the company that developed the Sunshine Harvester, arguably the first commercially viable combine harvester in the world.
The combine harvester got its start in Scotland in 1826 when Reverend Patrick Bell designed a reaper, a large machine pushed by horses that used a type of scissors to cut the stalks.
But it was Australian industrialist HV McKay who invented the Sunshine Harvester that would change agricultural operations for the better worldwide.
In 1884 a then 18 years old Hugh Victor McKay was growing tired and frustrated by the slow and laborious nature of harvesting wheat. So he set about assembling a stripper harvester on his father's property at Drummarton, Victoria.
He patented the Sunshine Harvester on 24 March 1885, which revolutionised wheat harvesting and sold throughout the world.
The Sunshine Stripper Harvester was immensely popular, and in the early 1890s McKay established his Sunshine Harvester Works in Ballarat.
The harvester played an important role in establishing Australia as a leading cereal producing country, and was one of the first manufactured products to be exported.
His equipment was widely used on farms across Australia and was exported to over 150 countries.
Following McKay's death, his legacy to Australian agriculture continued through McKay Massey Harris, and later Massey Ferguson (Australia). In 1986, after a period of over 80 years of manufacturing in Sunshine, the company ceased production.
His legacy now lives on in the Museum Victoria’s HV McKay Sunshine Collection.
According to Museum Victoria, the McKay collection includes over 13,000 photographs, 750 films, more than 3,000 trade publications, working models of equipment, company archives and other objects.
The collection began with donations from HV McKay in 1908 and a number of important family donations were made during the 1960s. Incredibly the largest donation came as the result of an employee, Ken Porter, rescuing material from a dumpster in the 1980s.
