Gippsland and Northern Co-operative Co. Ltd.

Gippsland and Northern Co-operative Co. Ltd.

Lately I have been digitising a collection of small adverts for Australian manufacturers of dairy machinery that was kindly passed on to me from Margaret Simpson, a curator in all things agricultural and mechanical at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

One company that kept appearing throughout the collection was the Gippsland and Northern Co-operative Company Ltd., which had me thinking about about our friends over at Old Gippstown, closer to events in Victoria. The Company are a well known produce seller, however from this assemblage it also appears that the Company was selling machines to the farmers through a dedicated Manufacturing Department (based at 607 Collins Street, Melbourne). In two other articles, the Company is identified as acting as auctioneer for real estate and cattle sales.

So Old Gippstown, have you any collection items that may tickle our interest in learning more about this important company?

Trade Advertisements for Dairy Machinery

After a furious period of scanning, I can now provide a link to the depository of scanned trade manual pages which reference the machinery included in the project. The name of the manufacturers, model names and the date are tagged, so one may navigate amongst the collection via several nodes.

Trade Manuals

When one is taking a wander through the collection, they might also like to take a side step to peruse the collection of machinery illustrations, in another gallery.

Machinery Illustrations

Babcock Milk Tester

Though a little shaky, the above video provides a good idea of a hand-worked Babcock Milk Tester in motion. The tester is in the collection of the Bega Pioneers Museum, who have kindly allowed me to present this material.

As per the last post, the centrifugal machine was worked by the user rapidly rotating the hand crank for about half a minute. This machine could fit two samples at any one time.