Sunshine Harvester Works

The Sunshine Harvester works, was an Australian factory operated by industrialist H. V. McKay. Having established an agricultural implement works in Ballarat he moved his factory and many of his employees to Braybrook Junction, in 1906, where he had earlier purchased the Braybrook Implement Works (1904). He named the new enterprise the Sunshine Harvester Works after his Sunshine Harvester, which was one of his major products. Through a revolutionary piece of marketing, this had gained a reputation as the first successful combine harvester in Australia. The factory became the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, and, in its early stages, McKay successfully increased the concentration and efficiency of the workers: ‘between 1907 and 1910-11, McKay’s workforce expanded from just over 400 to around 1500’. McKay rapidly expanded the factory to become the largest manufacturing plant in Australia and, at its peak, it employed nearly 3,000 workers. In 1907, following a residents' petition, the locality was officially renamed Sunshine in honour of the factory. Housing for the Sunshine Harvester Works' employees swelled the local population and the town of Sunshine was touted as the "Birmingham of Australia".

His Sunshine Estate (later known simply as Sunshine) is considered a pioneering development of a company town on the town planning principles of the Garden City movement. The principles of the Garden City movement were first developed by Ebenezer Howard in 1898 and re-applied in various contexts and forms. A Garden City is ‘a planned settlement designed to overcome the limitations of both town and country, by combining the best of both in free-standing, self-sufficient communities with ample parkland and public space.’ The main correlations between Howard’s ideas and H.V. McKay’s plan for the Sunshine Estate at Braybrook Junction include, firstly, the formation of a plan for a new town on undeveloped rural land (including the provision of varied infrastructure), the development of housing on spacious lots, and the establishment of a central garden for the benefit of the public. These aspects combine to present an early Australian version of a garden city, as well as the influence of an individual on the way in which garden city principles were applied, and the direction of town planning in Australia.

...
Wikipedia