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Around 1912, an inventor in Geelong called Gilbert Toyne, designed a rotary clothes hoist.
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By the early 1920s, Toyne's 'All-Metal Rotary Clothes Hoist' was being manufactured and advertised in Australia - about 25 years before the first 'Hills Hoist'.
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Lance Hill was a motor mechanic and he made the first Hill's Hoist for his wife whose washing kept falling off the prop washing line. The year was 1945. The place was Adelaide, South Australia.
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In 1947 Hills Hoists began manufacturing a wind-up clothes hoist which was identical to Gilbert Toyne’s expired 1925 patent with the crown wheel-and-pinion winding mechanism. Initially the clothes hoists were constructed and sold from Lance Hill’s home on Bevington Road
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In 1959 the company offered a hoist as a gift to the Queen and Queen Mother, but Australia's Governor-General, Field Marshal Sir William Joseph Slim, did not think the offer suitable to pass on to the Palace.
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Hills Industries celebrated the sale of the five millionth Hills Hoist in 1994 and now exports the clothes line around the world.
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The Hills Hoist has become an Australian cultural icon and was featured as the emblem of the 1996 Adelaide Festival of Arts and in the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.
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The Hills Hoist is still being sold today
