Futuristic machine that turned cow-milking into a hi-tech wonder

It was billed as a scientific marvel – a kind of bovine carousel that transformed a backbreaking job — and people came by the busload to this small town south of Sydney to see it.

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Disappointingly, the promise of a future where everyone wore a jet-pack to zoom about the skies never materialised, neither did hoverboards – and as for a world with driverless cars, well …

But if the idea of a giant, revolving, glass-walled machine that could automatically milk thousands of cows a day to produce seemingly limitless quantities of milk sounds equally as far-fetched, you might be surprised to discover it was true – and it existed at Camden Park Estate in Menangle just south of Sydney.

The Rotolactor was a technological wonder – an exciting symbol of post war Australian optimism, modernity and progress – a machine back from the future, the designed to overcome the backbreaking chore of old-time cow-milking with mechanical ease.

The Rotolactor was a giant, revolving, glass-walled machine that could automatically milk thousands of cows a day at Camden Park Estate in Menangle south of Sydney. Picture: Belgenny Farm

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The idea was both and simple and ingenious – the Rotolactor was a giant rotating turntable onto which fifty cows were herded into stalls – their udders hooked up to milking cups – and by the time the floor had travelled full circle the cows had been milked, fed and were then ushered out.

The revolving floor and stalls were housed in a futuristic, glass-walled, circular building illuminated by natural and fluorescent light, where ten operators could send through up to 375 cows per hour.

The Rotolactor’s futuristic name and it’s highly anticipated value for the future of agriculture resonated with post-war Australians – many of whom had first-hand knowledge or at least some exposure to rural life and just how unavoidably laborious, costly and strenuous it was to bring a bottle of milk to the table.

The Rotolactor at Camden Park Estate in 1953. Picture: The National Archives of Australia

Yet the idea for the revolving milking machine had its origins in the United States where in 1913 farmer Henry W. Jeffers devised what he termed a Rotolactor as a cost-cutting and labour-saving device designed for high volume milk production.

The first Rotolactor was built in New Jersey in 1930, yet it wasn’t until the 1940s when the manager of Camden Park Estate in NSW, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Macarthur Onslow saw the machine while on a business trip that the idea to build another in Australia took hold.

The Australian version would be twice the size of its US predecessor yet there were serious doubts as to whether it could be built at all completed in 1952 – the third in the world – and became an instant hit with a fascinated public.

A cow on the exit passage under the milking platform of the Camden Park Estate Rotolactor dairy. Picture: Belgenny Farm Trust

Workers doing milking quality control checks with cows on the Camden Park Estate Rotolactor dairy in the 1950s. Picture: Belgenny Farm Trust.

For schoolchildren the Rotolactor was billed as a scientific marvel – a kind of bovine carousel to which thousands of kids were bussed in from all over NSW to watch the cows pass glacially by, the floor slowly rotating slowly as litre after litre of milk was produced.

At it’s peak the machine received 2000 visitors per week making it one of Australia’s great tourist destinations.

Perhaps the most enticing aspect of a visit to the Rotolactor was the opportunity to try a milkshake from the farm’s milk bar … absolutely free.

Despite decades of service the Rotolactor suffered from increasing mechanical problems as it aged, finally closing the gates in 1983.