Western Australia's Muresk Institute is preparing to celebrate 100 years of specialist agricultural education in 2026.
The institute is on 898 hectares of research and farming land bought by the Western Australian Government in 1925 from Mrs E.W. Cotton, the daughter of Northam farmer Andrew Dempster.
The government set up the Muresk Agricultural College the following year and it attracted 16 students.
WA was the last of Australia's mainland States to establish an agricultural college.
The first principal was Hugh Jason Hughes, an inspector of high schools.
He and A.B. Adams, who had a degree in agricultural science, made up the first teaching team and the initial focus was on animal husbandry.
Muresk was the first State-controlled agricultural college to concentrate on training farm managers at a time when the general trend in Australia was on training agricultural technologists.
The college closed from 1942 to 1945 due to the impacts of World War II.
When it re-opened, its scope expanded to training technical officers for the Department of Agriculture.
In 1966, it moved towards taking in students qualified for tertiary entry and it was incorporated into the Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT) in 1969.
New Zealander Clyde Smith, a research scientist with CSIRO in Queensland, was appointed principal.
He saw the number of fellow New Zealanders appointed as farm consultants in WA, together with the findings of the Stern Report on agricultural education, as determining an urgent need for farm management education and training in WA.
He started recruiting new staff - tertiary educated and research-orientated - to teach in this developing area of farm management.
In 1970, the Muresk Diploma of Agriculture became a tertiary-orientated Associate Diploma in Agriculture, with farm management as its main focus, and the following year the agricultural college was the first in Australia to admit women students.
Muresk introduced the first undergraduate degree in agribusiness in Australia - a three and a half-year Bachelor of Business (Agriculture).
All students were required to do a semester of industry experience during their third year.
A horse management stream was introduced within the Associate Diploma - later becoming the Associate Diploma (Equine Stud Management), which was the first of its kind in Australia.
Muresk became the Muresk Institute of Agriculture in 1985 and Dr Ian Fairnie was appointed as the inaugural director.
Dr Fairnie's five-year plan for 1985-89 concentrated on taking the lead in the establishment and provision of a range of post-secondary education programs to increase awareness in the rural community of the benefits of better farm management.
Responsibility for Muresk's operation was transferred from WAIT (which became Curtin University) to the State Government in 2012.
The Department of Training and Workforce Development has since established the Muresk Institute as a multi-tenanted, multi-functional facility for training, higher education, research, professional development and learning extension.
Today, Muresk Institute offers a wide range of nationally-accredited courses, as well as workshops and professional development, hand-picked from leading training providers and industry experts across the country.
Training delivered on site includes the Diploma of Agribusiness Management, Diploma of Agriculture and other industry-driven short courses.
Muresk Institute is home to WA's first demonstration SMART Farm, which uses cloud-based technology, sensors and global positioning systems to provide farmers with data to make highly informed choices and improve efficiency.
Past and present students and their families will be encouraged to attend the 100 year anniversary of Muresk at the Muresk farm in October 2026.
