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PART TWO – The First Gravics
THIS is a 2021 UPDATE to this History Record.
[This part will be inserted as a new Part Two in this section]

When I wrote a History Record on Grant & Vickery in Company Histories
in 2016, I knew the clues were there – that they were probably making
powered lawnmowers as early as 1922.

I had the patents for a drive and a frame (intended for lawnmower use)
from that year but I could find no advertising records that the mower
went into production at that time.

It was a recent lucky find in the Bulletin of 1923 and 1925 that provided
the smoking gun that Grant & Vickery were indeed pioneer power
lawnmower makers in Australia.



This would place Grant & Vickery and Scott Bonnar as being almost
on par in the claim to being Australia’s first power mower maker.

There is a catch …

When one has a close look at the first Gravic power mower it is clear
that the chassis in an imported manually powered reel/roller mower.

My best guess is that the mower chassis is based on a
British Greens Silensmessor of that era - but modified to take
a clutch, engine, and engine frame.

The great unknown is the engine. It presents as an air-cooled two-stroke
of unknown origin. The engine appears to be fitted to a frame covered
in the 1922 Grant & Vickery patent.

So … in the early 1920s both Scott Bonnar and Grant & Vickery appear
to have been converting imported push mowers to power. Scott Bonnar
used an imported electric motor for their first mowers; Grant & Vickery
chose a petrol IC engine.

It is arguable that Freddie Larke’s New Moon of the mid-1920s is our
first true powered lawnmower – in that it used an Australian built engine
and chassis. You decide.

TO BE CONTINUED …