First harvester to be sold

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 15

First harvester to be sold

Last week an item was published on these pages about the start of header harvesting in New Zealand. The late Mr Albert Amos, of Wakanui, according to hi§ diary, believed that he was the first to use such a machine in peas on February 10. 1928. The harvester, a Sunshine, came into New Zealand from Australia through the long-estab-lished Christchurch firm of Andrews and Beaven, Ltd, and Mr lan McDonald, office manager of the process machinery division of the firm, has been looking through the firm’s register of sales which goes back to 1894

and starts with chaffcutters. He found that the first sale of a Sunshine header was made to the late Mr G. W. R. Osborne, of Doyleston. The date was November 10, 1927. As his son, Mr O. J. Osborne recalls, his father did not keep the machine for long and Mr McDonald says that it was apparently sold again on October 5, 1928, to J. D. Hall, of Hororata. Mr Amos’s machine was bought on January 11, 1928, and in due course passed on to T. Cadwallader, of Orton in South Canterbury, in 1934. This, of course, does not clear up who actually used his machine first.