George Skellerup

George Waldemar Skellerup (14 February 1881 – 5 June 1955) was a New Zealand businessman, company director and industrialist.

Early life

Skjellerup was born in 1881 in Cobden, a small town in Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne. He was the 13th and final child of Margaret Williamson and Peder Jensen Skjellerup, one of his siblings being the astronomer Frank Skjellerup. His father worked as a farmer before dying in an accident when Skjellerup was two years old.

Professional life

He moved to Fremantle in 1897 after leaving school aged 12 to be apprenticed to a surveyor. In Fremantle he worked under a Perth businessman before returning to Cobden in 1899. He soon left to make bicycle tyres for Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company. In 1902 Skjellerup sailed to New Zealand with little money, in Dunedin claiming to make the first New Zealand-made pneumatic bicycle tyres. Later he moved to Canterbury, eventually getting a job in Christchurch for the Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company, who he previously worked for in Melbourne.