Something that I continue to be in awe of is the amount of seriously large and/or heavy machinery that was transported from its place of manufacture to the middle of nowhere (and perhaps more so in the mid to late 1800s).

In this case it’s a cast iron something-or-other manufactured by Thomas Broadbent and Sons and transported several thousand miles from the north of England to the Australian Outback.

It was with a small amount of surprise that I found that this company is still in existence. Among other things they manufacture laundry equipment and centrifuges. The object in the photograph was sitting near the old wool scouring sheds at Mount Wood in Sturt National Park near Tibooburra. The object looks similar to the centrifugal driers in the top left of the Thomas Broadbent web page that were exhibited in Melbourne in 1889. So, for the time being at least, I’ll assume that that’s what it was.