My Cudmore forebears were pastoralists in South Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales.
The family’s involvement began with my 3rd great grandfather, Daniel Michael Paul Cudmore (1811 – 1891) who emigrated to Australia from Ireland, first to Van Diemen’s Land and then to South Australia. He made enough money building pisé houses to establish breweries in Adelaide and later at Kapunda. He also bought and farmed a section at Modbury near Adelaide. In 1847 he inherited property in Ireland. This he sold to take up a pastoral lease of 80 sq. miles (207 km²) at Yongala, which carried 18,000 sheep.
This was the beginning of the Cudmore pastoral business in Australia. At its peak there were Cudmore runs in South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, which Cudmore operated with his sons, various relatives by marriage, and later, with his grandsons.
Two sons in particular, my great great grandfather, James Francis Cudmore (1837-1912), and his brother Daniel Henry Cudmore (1844-1913) took up notable pastoral leases developed by their father.
Daniel Henry Cudmore held Avoca station, near Wentworth, New South Wales, from 1870. It had river frontages of ten miles (16 km) to the Murray and twenty-five miles (40 km) to the Darling.
Daniel was fascinated by agricultural machinery and technology. He spent many thousands of pounds draining part of the Darling lagoons (the anabranch) along his property and building water storage dams. Water from these was pumped to irrigate lucerne and other fodder crops. This was all on a large scale; at one stage Avoca station was shearing 120,000 sheep.
Blade shearing—‘Click go the shears, boys, click, click, click‘—gave way in the 1890s to powered machine-shearing technology, largely invented by the Irish-born Australian pastoralist Frederick York Wolseley (1837–1899).
Daniel Cudmore installed Wolseley machines on his properties, He was an admirer of Wolseley, giving one of his sons ‘Wolseley’ as a middle name. (This was Daniel Wolseley Cudmore (1889 – 1903).)
Daniel’s nephews, my great grand uncles Keith and Cecil Cudmore, appear to have experimented with handpieces driven by air under pressure (air-driven tools were commonly employed in mining), which drove the shears, powering, cooling and clearing the handpiece with a strong stream of compressed air.
A 1903 newspaper report of the shearing completed at Tara station near Barcaldine in Central West Queensland reported on the use of new shearing machines developed by Kenneth and Cecil Cudmore (sons of my great great grandfather, James Francis Cudmore, brothers of my great grandfather Arthur Murray Cudmore).
Capricornian (Rockhampton, Qld.), Saturday 3 October 1903, page 29
NEW SHEARING MACHINE
ON TARA STATION. MESSRS. CUDMORE'S INVENTION.
A valued correspondent sends us the following interesting notes : —
Shearing at Tara Station, in the Barcaldine district, was completed on Friday last. Tara is one of those aggregations of or rather consolidated grazing farms which were selected in 1887 after the drought ending about that time. Several blocks were taken up by the sons of the Cudmore family and Mr. Cudmore, the elder, who is well-known in South Australia as a grazier and shareholder in Broken Hill, expended a large amount of capital in thoroughly improving the run. Mr. A. D. Alexander at the same time selected Vermont, and Mr. Counsell, also of South Australia, took up Lyndon. Mr. J. K. Cudmore, the oldest son, settled at Tara and Mr. K. Cudmore built himself a house at Avoca, about twenty miles away. All these young men settled down in the country and gave their attention to breeding a first-class quality of sheep, in which they have been eminently successful, for there are no better sheep in the west than the flocks at Tara, Lyndon, and Vermont. They purchased the best ewes from Minnie Downs and other well-known flocks and bred from the best rams they could procure from the stud flocks in South Australia. They married and settled permanently on their grazing farms, improving them to the fullest extent of their means. A few years ago the first woolshed at Tara was burned down, with it being consumed all the furniture from the old house, which was being pulled down to build a new place. The new shed was erected half-a-mile away from its old position. It is a capacious, roomy, and well-ventilated structure with a shearing floor in the centre for thirty stands. Some three years ago Messrs. Cudmore and Sons introduced the compressed air process for working the machines. This was found to be a great improvement upon the ordinary methods ; but the machines were defective and Messrs. Kenneth and Cecil Cudmore, who are engineers by profession, have been experimenting for some time to produce a machine free from the defects of those previously in use. In this they have been entirely successful, and at the shearing just ended, twenty machines of their own invention and manufacture were fitted up on the shearing board.
To be successful a shearing machine must not only give satisfaction to the owner of the sheep. but it must be popular with the workmen who have to use it. Messrs. Cudmore's machine has achieved both results. The twenty machines were used to shear 40,000 sheep, and during the whole time of shearing not a breakage occurred nor a repair was needed. The constant rush of the air through the machine drives before it every particle of grit or dust and Ieaves the comb and cutter as bright and clean as when put into the machine. With some other machines the constant friction causes the combs and cutters to become very much heated after a few minutes' work. If they encounter a hard, foreign substance in the wool they are liable to break and soon become clogged with dirt. The Cudmore machine can be held loosely in the hand ; the other machines must be gripped firmly or they will twist in the hands of the shearer. They could not be put down on the floor, for instance, without jumping about in all directions , but the Cudmore machine can be laid anywhere even while working at full speed. After the shearing these machines were opened and found to have suffered no deterioration or wearing away from friction, whereas with other machines it is discovered after some time that the fork in which the spindle revolves is changed from a circular hole into an elliptical one. It is claimed for the Cudmore machine that there is a saving in oil, the allowance being one pint of oil in four days and it does away with the expensive belting and pulleys necessary to work some other machines.
As the compressed air process must naturally be unfamiliar to many readers of the "Morning Bulletin," I may mention that the power is generated in the engine-house adjoining the shed. A twelve horse-power Marshall boiler supplies the steam to work the engine, which draws the air through valves into a chamber and discharges it by other valves into the receiver, a cylinder capable of holding forty-eight cubic feet of the compressed air. A pressure gauge shows the amount supplied to the shearing machines. For the twenty at work a pressure of 23 lb is allowed. It passes through a 2 in. pipe into the shed and runs on both sides of it at a height of about 8 ft. above each stand. A tap turned by the shearer pulling a string lets the air into a 1/2 in. indiarubber tube to the end of which the machine is affixed. When the shearer has his sheep caught he takes a turn of the tube around his right arm, pulls the string, and the machine is ready to do its work. The air enters the machine through a small aperture at the butt and strikes alternately upon three little steel fans, which revolve a drum at the rate of 3000 revolutions per minute. This in turn works the spindle to which the comb and cutters are attached. The exhaust air escapes through holes at the base of the drum, through the handle of the machine, and in between the cutting portions, effectively preventing even the smallest atom of dust from interfering with the machinery, and keeping it perfectly cool even when working at the highest speed. Speaking to some of the shearers on the board, I gathered from them that they appreciate the machine, not only because it did not vibrate so much as others and could be held without gripping, but because it was always cool, safe, and reliable. There was also a most important feature in its favour — the saving in combs and cutters. The one defect which the shearers mentioned was the heavier weight of the machine as compared with some others. I believe the difference is about 2 1/2 lb. This is partially counterbalanced by a walking beam suspended over each stand which lifts the weight off the wrist of the operator. The additional weight is caused by the steel drum in the haft of the machine ; but Messrs. Cudmore are now substituting aluminium for steel, which reduces the weight by 3/4 lb. One machine thus treated was at work in the shed and the others will be fitted with aluminium at the next shearing. One objection which some shearers have had against the machine is that where a second cut is necessary the rush of air drives the wool right out on the floor, whereas with other machines it falls into the fleece, and, of course , is not noticeable. This, however, can hardly be considered a blemish, although a careless shearer might consider it to be so. I was interested in watching one shearer operating on a sheep that had been bogged in the recent rains and was covered with caked mud. The machine cut through dirt and wool almost as rapidly as through a clean fleece. At the finish the machine was taken to pieces and showed not the least sign of any dirt or dust having passed into it.
Messrs. Cudmore Brothers have applied for no patent for their machine, and state it can be fitted with the spindles of any other machine and, of course, any comb and cutters can be used. I may mention here that Tara is a homestead that has been considerably improved and beautified of late years. The house is a large two-storied building, with wide verandahs and balconies all around it opening on to flower gardens and shrubberies on three sides and a well-stocked vegetable garden on the fourth side. The site is a clayey ridge on the summit of the downs, from which a splendid view is available over miles of rolling downs now clothed in spring verdure spreading in all directions. It is connected by telephone with Avoca, Lyndon, Saltern railway station, Barcaldine Downs, and Dunraven, and with its own outstation. In front of the house is a gravel carriage drive, a well-made tennis court, and beyond that golf links. The house and garden are sup-plied with water from a large dam pumped up into receiving tanks by an aermotor which also supplies the shearing shed and men's quarters. Acetylene gas will be in-stalled shortly. Mr. Cudmore breeds horses in large numbers for the work of the station, the wool being all carried to the railway by his own teams. He has lately imported a prize Clydesdale stallion from Brisbane and has a large stud of draught mares. The sheep on the place are looking well, and if the seasons remain propitious, the losses sustained in the drought will soon be covered by the rapid increase in the flocks.
In the early twentieth century there was a major drought and Queensland was badly affected. The Western Champion and General Advertiser for the Central-Western Districts (Barcaldine, Qld.), Sunday 15 February 1903, reported:
Mr. James Cudmore, senr., who has been paying a flying visit to Tara was interviewed in Rockhampton by the Record. Mr. Cudmore stated that Tara had 50,000 sheep left after the drought, of which 20,000 were breeding ewes, and as there was abundance of grass he looked forward without apprehension to the coming winter.
The Cudmores’ refinement of the shearing equipment doubtless contributed to the efficient shearing of Tara Station’s 50,000 sheep.
This post was created as part of Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. This week’s theme is “Technology.”
Related posts and further reading
- Q is for questing in Queensland
- A is for Avoca
- The tristate tour February 2021 part 1 when we visited Avoca station
- MyHeritage AI review part 2 concerning James kenneth Cudmore
- P. A. Howell, ‘Cudmore, Daniel Michael (1811–1891)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cudmore-daniel-michael-6335/text9913, published first in hardcopy 1981
- also covers James Francis Cudmore (1837-1912) and Daniel Henry Cudmore (1844-1913)
Wikitree:
- Daniel Michael Paul Cudmore (1811 – 1891) my 3rd great grandfather
- James Francis Cudmore (1837 – 1912) my great great grandfather
- Daniel Henry Cashel Cudmore (1844 – 1913) my 2nd great grand uncle
- Daniel Wolseley Cudmore (1889 – 1903) one of the sons of Daniel Henry Cashel Cudmore
- Frederick York Wolseley (1837 – 1899) Irish-born New South Wales inventor and woolgrower who invented and developed the first commercially successful sheep shearing machinery which revolutionised the wool industry.