Who was William Farrer?
Farrer Hall is named after William James Farrer (1845-1906). Born in England, son of a tenant farmer, Farrer won scholarships first to Christ's Hospital, London, where he won awards for mathematics, and then to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took out his BA in 1868.
He began to read medicine but, when he contracted TB, emigrated at the age of 25 to Australia. Qualifying as a surveyor in 1875 Farrer worked with the NSW Department of Lands until 1886. He then settled, at his own expense, to research into wheat varieties near what later became Canberra. In 1898 he was appointed to the NSW Department of Agriculture as a wheat experimentalist on a salary of 350 pounds a year.
His only chance of real wealth he passed up: a wealthy uncle in England asked him to return to inherit his fortune - or stay in Australia and get nothing. He stayed.
His research was prompted by the evident unsuitability of the (basically European) varieties of wheat used in Australia at the time. They were unsuited to drier conditions, were especially prone to the fungal disease, rust, and did not produce particularly good grains for milling or good straw for harvesting. At a time when Mendelian genetic principles had not yet been rediscovered, he was interested in the heritability of disease resistance, of grain quality factors and of maturing rates.
His first successes, in 1889, came from selecting outstanding individual plants from imported strains and breeding from them. By writing to agricultural colleagues in several countries he was able to collect a wide range of strains, which formed the basis of his work. In the first years of this century he had many successes. His grain, 'Federation', was the leading variety for the whole of Australia between 1910 and 1925; and, of the 29 varieties recommended for growing in NSW during the same period, 22 were his. In fact his wheat's were largely responsible for the expansion of wheat cultivation into drier or dust-prone areas in NSW. (Between 1897 and 1915 the area under wheat increased fourfold.)
Five years after his death a Farrer Memorial Fund was opened in Sydney. It now endows an annual Farrer Memorial Medal, for outstanding service to agricultural science in research, education and administration, and the Farrer Memorial Research Scholarship, for postgraduate research in agriculture.
William Farrer has appeared on postage stamps and currency and his name has been given to streets, schools, a Canberra suburb, a flour mill and several institutions, of one of which is Farrer Hall of Residence. There is a bronze bust of him in the centre of the Queanbeyan, in the Australian Capital Territory.
Back to About section >