History of the Super Sopper
In 1974 Gordon Withnall was playing golf at Liverpool Golf Course in Sydney when his ball landed in a large puddle of water. “Come on Gordon, you’re an inventor: invent a machine to remove all these puddles!” said his friend Tom. Gordon accepted the challenge and went to work shaping some perforated metal he already had in the workshop and the first machine was made in 3 days, it was roughly the same size as the modern day ‘Sandpiper’.
This was the first machine globally to ‘squeeze’ water through perforated cylinders into a water tank and as such Gordon applied for and received a global patent for his invention, the ‘Super Sopper’.
At that time there was a television program on ABCTV called ‘The Inventors’. During that year of 1974 the ‘Super Sopper’ machine was entered and voted the best machine of the night. Gordan’s son, Len, distinctly remembers Di Fisher asking ‘Does it come in any other colours?’ The Super Sopper then made it to the end of year finals, where it came second to a ‘so-called’ petrol saving device that was fitted to a car’s carburettor.
Gordon Withnall,
inventor of the Super Sopper
From the ensuing publicity from this program, the Withnall’s started to sell about fifty small machines each year to schools, councils, tennis courts and cricket clubs.
In 1979 Gordon received a phone call from Ian Johnson, who was the then Arena Manager at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. He wanted Gordon in Melbourne the next day to discuss inventing a large roller which could dry the entire MCG ground, and consequently the ‘Whale’ Supper Sopper was born. That year in Melbourne it was very wet, but the MCG was always dry thanks to the Super Sopper.
It didn’t take long for word to get out and before long VFL clubs in Melbourne purchased a ‘Whale’ Super Sopper, as well as racecourses all over Australia. Harry Brind, Curator of ‘The Oval’ in London, was in Australia at the time on a ‘fact finding’ mission and arranged to get a demonstration of the ‘Whale’ Super Sopper at the MCG with Jack Lyons, Curator at the MCG. Harry was so impressed by the amount of water removed by the ‘Whale’, he flew to Sydney the next day and ordered one to take back to England.
After exporting its first machine to the UK more orders came in and soon Cricket playing countries all over the world were ordering Whales to keep their grounds dry during inclement weather. In 1984 the business then started making significant quantities of Sandpipers and Minnows for export to Japan used in schools and local community spaces. Super Sopper has been exporting machines all over the world ever since.
The business moved from Sydney to Taree on the mid Coast in NSW in 1995 as space in Sydney became harder to manage. In 2018 it changed hands and became part of the Matrix Group of companies. Today the business persists as 100% Australian, still exporting machines all around the world – this product is a true Aussie success story and will remain a legacy of the Withnall family, all because of a game of golf.
Tom Parker, Curator,
Curator, Sydney Cricket Ground