Over the years, hand in hand with buying or building your ideal home has been owning a lawn mower. The cult of proudly having a mower parked in the shed has kept pace with urban expansion, as the mower, it seems, helped satiate the house-proud home owner’s burning desire to create and maintain the best lawn in the street.

The Victa brand has been the lawn mower at the forefront of helping Australians cultivate that beaut Aussie lawn for more than six decades. As the quintessential manufacturer of this iconic brand, Victa has rolled out about eight million mowers across Australian homes since 1952.

While the Victa production story began in Mervyn Victor Richardson’s suburban Sydney backyard in Concord that year, Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, which holds a special collection of Victa mowers, credits Lawrence Hall, a boat engine builder, with inventing a rotary blade lawn mower four years earlier.

Hall had dubbed his ‘mower’ the “Mowhall”. It had blades mounted onto a plough disc and used a kerosene tin as the petrol tank, a boat motor and a tubular steel frame. The museum reports it was so heavy that Hall’s son and nephew had to pull it with a rope, as well as push it across the lawn. Hall demonstrated his mower in a Concord park, with Richardson one of the onlookers, but the innovation failed to make an impression on the latter. The mower’s impracticality meant the initial design was not going to be a commercial success.

But in 1952, when Richardson was called on to make some cylinder type mowers for his son's part-time lawn-mowing business, he eventually turned Hall’s great idea into a phenomenal success. He tinkered together a lightweight, cheap, prototype rotary-blade lawn-mower with a peach tin for its petrol tank and a two-stroke engine, the museum reports. The first rotary lawnmower, known as the ‘Peach Tin Prototype’, was ready for action. Word spread as people were impressed at how the invention made lighter work of cutting and taming the rough grasses that inhabited Sydney’s suburban sprawl. History shows the Victa brand rapidly evolved into a household name. Its wheels and spare parts even found other uses in the home, including adorning the odd billy-cart that would screech along suburban streets to the cheers of young kids. Within two years of production Richardson sold 20,000 Victa brand mowers and had begun to export them.

From the early days, Victa used smart and catchy advertising campaigns to ensure weekends were spent pushing the Victa under another Australian icon, the Hills Hoist clothesline.

The mower was billed as ‘new’, ‘reliable’, ‘affordable’ and the essential ingredient for a relaxing weekend. Advertisements were posted on Sydney trams and billboards with slogans such as ‘no lawn too fine, no growth too tough’. The slogan ‘Turns grass into lawn’ was still used 50 years later from its 1959 origins.

By 1992 the five millionth Victa rolled off the assembly line of what was the world's biggest lawn-mower factory. The brand remains as relevant in today’s marketplace through its reputation for innovation, superior performance and reliability, says Victa category manager lawn and garden products, Joel Hawkins. Innovative public relations and advertising campaigns also continue.

Australia's affinity for its home-grown mower, Joel says, saw it recognised as a lifestyle “brand of choice” with an entire routine dedicated to it during the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. In 2001 Victa continued to innovate, this time using the internet as a creative tool to more easily inform customers and to advertise its products. Web forums and YouTube then evolved to host online collector clubs of die-hard Victa lawn-mower enthusiasts who were keen to not only buy, swap and sell antique mowers but to share their Victa stories.

Fast forward to 2015 and today’s quick-start mowers with enhanced engines, foldable handles and multi-mulching disk are a long way from the iconic ‘Peach Tin Prototype’; and petrol engines and battery-powered products continue to provide alternatives for outdoor power equipment to maintain outdoor spaces. In its latest mower range, Victa has looked to the past to power the next generation of mowers. The new V-Force+ range is powered by a 40V/4.0Ah lithium ion battery, the origins of which stretch back to the early 1900s. New technology means the battery offers long-lasting, optimum run times with up to 2000 recharges for improved mowing, Joel says.

“Over the past 20 years the technology has majorly evolved, and for Victa it has meant we have been able to create a new range of outdoor power equipment powered by lithium ion battery,” he says. “The end results are lithium ion battery-powered products, which are lightweight, easy to start and fuss-free, while still offering the power required to deliver a strong, dependable performance.”

In 2008 Victa’s parent company became US-based small engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton, a major supplier of engines to the brand. The majority of mower products continue to be made in Australia at Victa’s Moorebank NSW head office, with lawn care products exported globally.

Victa’s success, Joel says, can be attributed to cultivating a legacy of innovation for portable energy solutions through seeking feedback from customers via its major retailers, such as Bunnings Warehouse. Retails partnerships are important to Victa’s business, he says, and any new ranges will remain suited to Australian climates with consumer and retailer feedback continuing to be an important component in developing new generations of lawn mowers. “We listen to our retailers like Bunnings and the feedback they receive from their customers and base our improvements on that feedback,” he says. “We are constantly adding innovations across our entire range, including better engines, brushless motors and lightweight steel to ensure any number of users, from beginner to expert, can operate our products with minimal effort and ultimately spend more time with their loved ones.”

What’s your memories of owning and pushing a Victa mower around your garden? Share your comments below...