George and Alfred Griffiths

Readers note: This is an excerpt from the 200 Treasures exhibition catalogue, developed in 2017. This content was written as a brief biography on why this person was included in the exhibition.

The Griffiths brothers, George Herbert and Alfred Atherton, designed an iconic symbol of the Australian outback, the Southern Cross windmill.

The story began in industrial northern England. Here, George and Alfred’s father, George Washington Griffiths, trained at Manchester Mechanics’ High School before emigrating to Queensland in 1870 with his wife, Isabella Park Atherton. The family settled in Toowoomba and bought an ironmongery and repair shop.

George Washington and his brother, John Alfred, founded Griffiths Bros & Co. in Toowoomba, in 1873, and built a foundry that produced Australia’s earliest metal windmills and railway carriages. This was the business George Herbert and Alfred Atherton began to operate from the late 1890s. This second generation of Griffiths brothers developed the Southern Cross windmill, with George Herbert contributing the technical skills and Alfred Atherton the business acumen.

The Southern Cross windmill first began appearing at agricultural shows in 1905. By 1906, the company was boasting that the windmill was ‘the most effective means of raising water by wind power’ and that the business was the largest windmill works in the southern hemisphere with the ‘highest quality materials and finish’ and specifically designed for Australian requirements.

A year later, as the windmill gained popularity, the company now claimed that ‘up-to-date farmers are beginning to realise the benefits of windmills and ere long their use should be almost universal throughout the country’, a claim that was ultimately realised.

As the Southern Cross Group, the firm diversified beyond its signature product into other agricultural ironworks and machinery. The Griffiths brothers remained involved with their growing firm until Alfred’s death in Toowoomba, in 1948. The firm became Industrial Investments in 1949. George outlived his older brother by 29 years, dying in Toowoomba in 1977.