British Thompson Houston brochure

This is great, thank you for posting Wish I had time to read it all in one sitting. 24 manufacturing operations on the metal glass leads alone, WOW!

Very interesting reading thanks for posting.

This is like a whole other world in the realm of our beloved models. So cool.

I haven't been able to work that one out either. My understanding of the tariff situation was that if something could be, or already was being made in Australia, then very high duties were applied to importing that item. I would assume that the market just wasn't large enough to make the Monitor Tops here, with the specialised machinery required; more complex than for "ordinary" hermetic refrigerators. Looking at newspaper advertising for the time, it also seems that MT's were only being sold in the eastern states.

Having said that, the tariff situation with other Commonwealth countries was much more favourable. It is for this reason that "American" cars that were being sold here were actually Canadian (including my Model T Ford). The fact that Canada had provinces driving on the left side of the road also meant that cars being produced there suited Australia.
It has had me curious for some time - why didn't we get Canadian or British Monitor Tops? BTH and other English fridges were being sold here, so we could have had the English version.

I believe it was. Electrification in cities and large towns was very rapid, but the thing to remember is the isolation of rural communities meant that electrification came quite late to them.
Where there was electricity on rural properties is was usually from a 32V DC lighting plant, which consisted of a single cylinder stationary engine, a generator, and if the owner could afford it, a bank of batteries to provide continuous power. 32V appliances were still being sold in the 1960's; everything from vacuum cleaners to TV sets.
That was for the moderately well off...the rest of the populace made do with kerosene lamps and battery operated radios - there was a huge market for those here. Again because of isolation, the take up of radio in Australia was also very rapid.
But to get back to the subject of refrigeration; most people did not have a refrigerator in the 1930's. Meat safes and ice boxes were still common into the 1950's. For those that did have one, in a non electrified rural area it was always a kerosene powered absorption fridge. They were very common here. If you were middle or upper class, and in a town or city, then yes, an electric fridge was likely. A lot of them were imported English models, some locally made brands, but also well known U.S. brands.
The population was still quite small, and much more rurally based than now, so I'd guess to make the machines for the hydrogen welding, and to make the round condensers would have been seen as too difficult for the small market. I have not actually seen any other U.S fridges in the flesh so to speak, except for a 30's hermetic Westinghouse. It appeared to have a 240V compressor - if it was made locally or not I don't know - all the labels seemed to be missing.
There's a book that gives an insight into Australian General Electric in the MT era which may be of some interest nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52840010/view?searchTerm=australian+general+electric&partId=nla.obj-100173208#page/n0/mode/1up
The kitchenalia part starts at page 27.

Hey, Trove! I'm actually at a conference right now (in Brisbane) where a speaker was taking about the technology and techniques behind that archive.

I wonder if there's anything like that info for BTH?

Imagine if GE had combined forces of all it's international subsidiaries to build a DR army (to use a phrase from a different thread) to rule the refrigeration world across the globe...