POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Hand-powered washing machine

Object No. 92/337

This washing machine is an example of the rugged well-designed products made by the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) for use in remote Australian communities. It was part of a program aimed at providing training and jobs for Indigenous people and making products that would be useful to communities and could be repaired using local resources. The machine also represents the international appropriate design movement. This approach developed in the late 1960s from the California-based Hippy sub-culture, which practised an alternative and ecologically conservative lifestyle. Its principles were formalised and championed by US product designer Victor Papanek and British economist Ernst Schumacher. Papanek lived for several years in Navajo, Inuit and Balinese communities, and Schumacher worked for a time in Burma and was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. Many features of the washing machine can be seen in pre-electric machines made for the same purpose. While it, like other early CAT products, is retro in design, the organisation later changed its emphasis to providing solar energy solutions. Through its Bushlight program, it produces robust community-level energy generation, energy management and training in remote parts of Australia. It has reached far beyond its original aims, installing large solar arrays in cities such as Darwin and Sydney and playing a major role in the National Solar Schools Program. Its Bushlight India project, which delivers reliable renewable energy to remote communities in India, won the Engineers Australia top award for 2011. Gandhi would have been impressed! Debbie Rudder, Curator, 2012