ERNEST WAGSTAFF THE FIRST TIME ESSEX-BORN businessman Ernest Wagstaff ever drove a car was in 1901. It happened in Melbourne - and he took to it instantly.
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Strapping 37 years old Ernest Wagstaff, with fine signature moustache, in one of his Daimlers prior to the epic Adelaide drive. It is a special-bodied two seater model.
Still behind the wheel at Bathurst in 1908, driving the same Daimler which made the assault from Melbourne to Adelaide and return in 1907. It looks in good condition.
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Although there with his wife on a business venture, he immediately set off on a gruelling drive from Melbourne to Sydney. It would pave the way for cars and trucks in the near future, but was a hazardous undertaking, over rough roads which deteriorated into tracks without fuel and repair facilities. Daimler was the first major manufacturer of cars in Britain, and became a Royal favourite having been established in 1896. Wagstaff would remain a life-long Daimler devotee, and saw it purchased by Jaguar in 1960. Ernest Edward Wagstaff was born in 1870, the son of a prosperous Essex farmer who employed over 40 workers full time. However, his son was not destined to till the soil or sell cattle. From the age of five he was sent to a boarding school in Kent, followed by another in Stratford-On-Avon, resulting in his not being a home-body. In fact, most of his life would be spent in Australia where he was naturalised.
He began work as an office junior in London in 1886, then three years later entered the petroleum industry, rising quickly in a subsidiary of Standard Oil, followed by two Rothschild oil companies. He made his name by organising the construction of terminal facilities for kerosene, then the main oil product. On October 10, 1894 at Woodford, Essex, he married French-born, but English-raised, Florence Emilie Clerc.
In 1903 the business he worked for joined the 'Shell' Transport & Trading Co. Ltd, and Royal Dutch Petroleum in forming Asiatic Petroleum to distribute the products of the three parent firms in Asia, Australasia and parts of Africa. The Wagstaffs returned to Melbourne in 1904 to head Asiatic's Australasian subsidiary. Realising the future lay with internal combustion engines, 'Waggy' (to his friends), brilliantly had it written into his contract that he would receive a commission from all products which went through the business! It's difficult to imagine how much money that evolved into with petrol becoming a necessity! He named the new enterprise the British Imperial Oil Co. Ltd, hoping to appeal to the patriotism of his customers. It was retitled Shell Australia in 1927. Ernest Wagstaff despatched one of the first Daimlers to Australia in 1903, ready for his imminent arrival the following year. Within the ranks of the relatively wealthy in Australia the size of the
Australia's pioneer in a Daimler
The founder of Shell Australia undertook gruelling drives from 1901. In 1907 in his Daimler he was the first to drive return from Melbourne to Adelaide. 34
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EDITION 214 JAGUAR MAGAZINE
