PART SIX - SIGNIFICANCE & ASSESSMENT
The Alex Grahame rotaries are clearly collectable, given their early Australian-made
lawnmower heritage. For me, their significance does not lie in their conservative designs,
but in their being a product of an early Australian lawnmower company, dating to 1890.
This is a company that saw and experienced it all - from push, pony, horse, gang, and power
(electric & petrol), reel mowers to the rotary revolution of the 1950s. If nothing else,
Alex Grahame was a survivor!
The rotary designs, however, could not really survive the 1960s, where the expectations about
what a lawnmower was and what it should cost clearly outpaced the capacity of a small company
with no real dealer network or Australia-wide coverage. This is not so unusual - out of the
dozens of small manufacturers that sprung up in the 1950s, many would not see the next decade;
none would survive to see the 1970s. It would be the big players - Victa, Rover, Pope, Turner,
Supa-Swift - that would advance Australian lawnmower design from here on in.
The Company, however, did survive the 1960s, but not as a lawnmower manufacturer. They re-
mained repairers and dealers. They also manufactured a highly successful motorised vacuum cleaner
they named the Litter-Vac. At some stage, that design was sold to Victa ... to become the Victa-Vac,
a product still sold today!
I don't know when the company closed shop. The last records I have date from the late 1960s.
I guess the company ran its natural course.
The rest is history.
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JACK
