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Updated September 2001

Samuel Davenport's Some New Industries... did "little else than bring together letters written at the end of 1863, and which the South Australian Regsiter was good enough first to publish." [Preface, p.v). These letters resulted from Davenport's tour of Europe, mostly southern France, and Britain in 1863. As well as olive cultivation and olive oil processing, the industries included verdigris manufacturing, mulberry and silkworm farming, scented flower growing and essential oil extraction and tobacco culture. Davenport wrote two letters on olives, both in November 1863. Some New Industries... established Davenport as an authority on olive culture and silkworm farming. Not yet available

Boothby's The Olive... was, like Davenport's book, the product of holiday " in the years 1876 and 1877, to visit the olive countries of Europe, and make myself acquainted with the processes of olive cultivation and manufacture of oil. ...the following notes have been compiled from information gained during my tour. The information which I gleaned is altogether too voluminous to be published in full; but from the mass of particulars which I collected, I have eliminated those points upon which it appeared to me intending olive cultivators or manufacturers might require information." Not yet available (except for diagrams on pruning young olive trees; new window)

Villanis' The Cultivation of the Olive... was reprinted from articles originally published in the influential horticultural magazine, The Garden and Field in 1883. It remained the most substantial and comprehensive local book on olive culture until 1998. Relying mostly on personal experience, Villanis "gathered the following notes into as concise a form as possible, adding to the precepts of the most renowned authors and authorities the facts I myself have become acquainted with during my own practice in the culture of the tree and the manufacture of its products." Villanis' expertise was recognised by the Adelaide City Council which contracted Villanis to superintend the City's olive plantations from 1882 to 1886. Not yet available

Beaumont was the (Acting) Manager of the Blackwood Experimental Orchard until about 1917 and, at the time of writing this article, was the Orchard Instructor. His method for making olive oil is certainly not recommended. Apart from its curiosity value, this and similar documents about the same time on curing olives suggests that the Department of Agriculture encouraged farmers to use the many olive trees that, a generation before, the Government had encouraged them to plant.

From Journal of Agriculture (SA), January 1921, pp.489-490

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Fowler succeeded Beaumont as the Manager of the Blackwood Experimental Orchard about 1917, a post he held as late as 1940. In 1927 Fowler reported on the experimental work undertaken at Blackwood, including the observation and testing of the olive trees, and he wrote several articles on olive culture for the Department of Agriculture's Journal of Agriculture (SA) in the 1920s and 1930s. This pamphlet is evidence of the Department's continuing interest in olive cultivation and oil production, particularly during the Second World War.

From the pamphlet, reprinted from Journal of Agriculture, SA, November 1940.

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