H. V. McKay

McKay was born the fifth child of a family of twelve near Drummartin, between Elmore and Raywood, Victoria. His parents were Irish Protestants from Monaghan in Ulster who arrived in Victoria in 1852. His father, Nathaniel McKay had been a stonemason and then a miner, before becoming a farmer around the end of 1845.

Hugh attended Drummartin Primary School, and received some education from his father Nathaniel, before returning to the farm at 13. In 1883 he read about combine harvesters in California. With his brother John and his father he built a prototype stripper-harvester by January 1885 and patented the Sunshine Harvester on 24 March 1885, which revolutionised wheat harvesting and sold throughout the world. Although he lost a Victorian Government prize for the first working stripper-harvester to James Morrow in 1885, he successfully commercialised his invention, and had them built under contract in Melbourne and Bendigo. In 1888, he opened a working factory in Ballarat. In 1891 he married Sarah Irene Graves.

He later acquired the Braybrook Implement Works, and renamed it the Sunshine Harvester Works after his Sunshine Harvester. In 1907, the residents of Braybrook Junction voted to rename the suburb Sunshine. The plant was expanded rapidly and at its peak employed nearly 3000 workers. It was the largest factory in Australia and as an example of entrepreneurship has probably not been surpassed in Australia.

McKay was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1918 for his service to war industries.

McKay died at Rupertswood, a mansion in Sunbury, Victoria on 21 May 1926 and was survived by his wife, daughter Hilda Stevenson, and two sons, Hugh Victor McKay Jr., and Cecil Newton McKay, an aviator. McKay's probate was valued at £1,448,146; a codicil vested the income from 100,000 shares in the H. V. McKay Charitable Trust, chaired by George Swinburne, with the aim to improve country life and aid charity in Sunshine.