5 Great Australian Inventions

Australians are known to use a little ‘Aussie ingenuity” to get things done, from solving a small problem to creating world-changing innovations, for such a small country in terms of size and economy on the world scale, we certainly hold our own.

To celebrate our love for inventions, we’ve collated some of Australia’s iconic inventions.

The Ute

In 1933, a farmer’s wife wrote to Ford Australia asking “can you build a car that we can use to go to church on Sunday without getting wet, and that my husband can use to take the pigs to market on Monday?”1

After the letter had come down through the hierarchy at Ford, it landed on 22-year-old designer Lew Bandt’s desk. Taking the new Ford V8 sedan, augmenting it with a tray that formed part of the body and adding a few extra timber braces to strengthen the area where the two parts of the vehicle met – the ute was born.