| Born Docker, Westmorland, England, 3 April 1845. Died 16 April 1906. Scholarship to Christ's Hospital, London, where he won a gold and a silver medal for mathematics. Educated at the University of Cambridge (BA 1868). Arrived in Australia 1870. Worked as a Tutor on George Campbell's sheep station, Duntroon (Canberra), New South Wales, qualified as s surveyor 1875. He worked in the Department of Lands in the Dubbo, Nyngan, Cobar and Cooma districts 1875-86;,then in 1886 bought Lambrigg, on the Murrumbidgee River near where Canberra now stands.
Farrer pioneered scientific wheat production and, after many years of patient research, he was able to develop several new strains of disease resistant wheat by cross breeding from 1889.
Nathan Cobb planted the first trial of more than 200 wheat varieties in 1893. Cobb, a plant pathologist at Wagga, worked with the wheat breeder William Farrer, who was located at ”Lambrigg”, near Queanbeyan.
From 1896, the Wagga site was also educating farmers at the Experiment Farm School.
Farrer joined the Department in 1898, working mainly at Wagga but also at Cowra and other experiment farms.1901 saw the release of his most famous wheat variety, Federation. Farrer’s early maturing wheats enabled a rapid expansion of wheat growing in Australia.
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William Farrer
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The successful experiments of William Farrer at the Wagga Wagga Experimental Farm (now the Wagga Agricultural Research Institute) in the 1890s produced new disease-resistant strains and higher yields. His best known wheat was "Federation", the leading variety throughout Australia 1910-25 and in 1914, of the 29 varieties recommended for growing in New South Wales 22 had been developed by him. Another wheat variety was Ford wheat which was developed for making hay.
His legacy includes the Farrer Memorial medal for outstanding service to agricultural science in research, administration and education. The Farrer Memorial research scholarship awarded for postgraduate research in agriculture; currency; stamps; various schools; streets; a suburb of Canberra; a flour-mill; and several institutions, as well as a local hotel in Wagga Wagga called the 'William Farrer Hotel', and a nearby street called Farrer Road, close to this cache, at the front entrance of the Charles Sturt University.
William Farrer was featured on the back of the two dollar Australian note, with Macarthur featured on the front. A first to find prize of a two dollar note is included in the cache, as well as some scratchies for the first ten finders.
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William Farrer Hotel
William Farrer on the $2 Note |
| An included way point of the entry gate, is the best way to get to the cache with a nice easy bush walk along the original road around the hill. At ground zero you will find the ruins of Farrer's Lab, all that is left is the cellar, as the floor has recently caved in. If you look around the site you can see some of the plants which were grown in the garden around the lab, and the remains of the water tank on the slope below. An additional waypoint is included where the original granary stood, with the fields below the granary used to grow the wheat. Unfortunately none of these sites are even marked with a plaque.
Cache is a Ammo box, with some goodies for the youngsters.
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