Published Resources Details
Conference Paper
- Title
- Engineering South Australia's grain mills
- In
- Transactions of the 5th South Australian Engineering Heritage Conference, Adelaide, 13 May 2016
- Imprint
- Engineers Australia, South Australia Division, Adelaide, 2016, pp. 9-26
- Abstract
From 1836 to the present South Australia had about 215 grain mills with a peak of 88 operational mills in 1880. These had a variety of functions - foremost the production of wheaten flour for human consumption, but also the production of oatmeal, rolled oats, animal feed, and cleaning grain for export, especially after mouse and weevil plagues.
For millennia, the Australian aborigines used laborious rubbing stones to grind a variety of seeds into meal for food. This technology was still in use by them until recent times. In Europe, the rotary mill had been developed over 2000 years ago as a result of the successful cultivation of a particular grain - wheat. With plenty of flour becoming available, bread became a staple food in that part of the world.
With the arrival of the first colonists in South Australia in July 1836, wheat was sown the following autumn and flourished. With a rapidly increasing population, an increasing demand for flour arose and was only partly satisfied by domestic hand mills brought by some of the more provident colonists. Imports from Sydney and Hobart made up the shortfall. There is a suggestion that some of the wheat was sent to Van Diemen's Land to be ground, but clearly local mills were needed.
Related Published resources
isPartOf
- Transactions of the 5th South Australian Engineering Heritage Conference, Adelaide, 13 May 2016 edited by Venus, Richard (Adelaide: Engineers Australia, South Australia Division, 2016), 98 pp. Details