Someone recently was asking about early South Australia. This may be of interest, particularly if you can find his books. under heading John Wrathall BULL (1804-1886), inventor and historian, was born in Kent on 23rd June 1804. At an early age he took up dairying in Cheshire, and in 1838 migrated to S. Aust. There he began dealing in stock, buying from the overlanders to re-sell to new arrivals but the financial crisis of 1839 drove him to abandon this business, whereupon he settled near MOUNT BARKER as a stock owner with agriculture as a side line. the crisis of 1842-3 (which affected all the Aust. settlements) nearly ruined him again, and he was forced to concentrate on agriculture; his attention was thus called to the very primitive methods employed in this industry requiring a great number of field hands, who at the time were unobtainable except at exorbitant wages. BULL devised the plan of "thrashing a standing crop" - taking the grain from the ears as they stood and leaving the straw untouched in the field. In Sept. 1843 he exhibited a model on this principle, but it found no favour except with John RIDLEY (q.v.), who immediately constructed a reaping machine that was successfully used during the ensuring harvest. There has been a good deal of controversy on the question whether BULL or RIDLEY should be credited with the invention of the "stripper", but BULL himself never complained; how own account is that he had placed his model at the service of the public. He and several others afterwards constructed machines embodying the stripping principle. In 1882 Parliament voted him 250 pounds in recognition of his share in the improvement. In 1853 BULL went to the Victorian goldfields and had moderate success, but returned to S.A. in 1853. He than became manager of the GILLIES estate at GLEN OSMOND, planted a vineyard there and established a depot in Adelaide for the sale of is own and other colonial wines. Some years later he began to write a history of the colony and circulated privately several chapters of the work. this resulted in the publication in 1878 of "Early Experiences of Life in South Australia", which was republished in 1884 under the title "Early Experiences of Life in South Australia and an extended Colonial History". The book is an unsystematic but often illuminating account from anon-political pint of view of the first 50 years of the colony's existence. Bull died on 21st September, 1886. ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ Regards, Mary of Melbourne FOSTER, Coventry - PRITCHARD,Coventry - GEOFFREY, Middlesex - ORCHARD, Warminster, Wiltshire STUART,Glasgow, - EDWARDS,England, GREATZ,NSW - PFITZNER, Prussia WILLIAMS,CUNNINGHAM, HUMPHREYS,MULVIHILL - All to Victoria Australia