Frederick Wolseley

Frederick York Wolseley (16 March 1837 – 8 January 1899) was an Irish-born New South Wales inventor and woolgrower who invented and developed the first commercially successful sheep shearing machinery after extensive experimentation.

The former Murray Shire Council erected a monument to him where he lived at the time, referring to his invention: "It has become part of the rich history of the wool industry and is now perpetuated in poem and song."

[4] Frederick Wolseley, unassisted, went to Melbourne from Ireland, arriving in July 1854,[5] aged 17, to be a jackaroo on his future brother-in-law's sheep station.

His sister Fanny's husband, Gavin Ralston Caldwell, they married in Dublin in 1857, held Thule, on the Murray River, and later added nearby Cobran near Deniliquin; both stations were in New South Wales.

Now living at Euroka, he continued testing and on 28 March 1877 he and Robert Savage (1818–1888), the inventor of various items of mining and agricultural machinery, were granted a patent.

[6] The following year, Wolseley bought John Howard's rights to his horse clipper and hired him to work as a mechanic on his Euroka station.

[6] By 1893 they were facing a crisis when it was discovered they had sold a large amount of defective machinery, brought about by the failure of local suppliers to meet the required specifications.

[6] Handicapped throughout his final ten years by his battle with cancer, he resigned as managing director of his company in 1894 and made what proved to be a brief return to Australia.

Going back to England that same year for specialised treatment, he remained there, where he died aged 61 on 8 January 1899 at The Red House, Belvedere Road, Norwood, Surrey,[2] and was buried at Beckenham cemetery.

[4] In the second half of the 1890s, Austin turned his attention to car manufacture as a way of stabilising the Wolseley business's inherent seasonal fluctuations.

F H Dangar, director of Commercial Banking Co of Sydney (London board) The company is formed for the purpose of acquiring and working the patent rights in Great Britain .

[11] Manufactured in Birmingham, England, around 1930, the shearing plant is powered by a 32-volt, three horse-power single-cylinder petrol engine, mounted on a wooden trolley base with four cast iron wheels.

The plant, weighing 550 kg, was used on a sheep property named 'Emoh Ruo' in the Rockley-Black Springs area of New South Wales.

[13] This cairn marks the locality of Cobran homestead, where a 17-year-old Irishman named Frederick York Wolseley gained his five years "colonial experience" under the guidance of John Phillips, a former owner of Warbreccan station, Deniliquin.