1923 – Insulin manufactured in Australia for the first time 17 May 2021 Photograph courtesy of the State Library of South Australia. Professor Thorburn Brailsford Robertson obtains a licence from Toronto’s Insulin committee to prepare insulin in Australia. As a result, insulin was manufactured for the first time in Australia at the University of Adelaide. Robertson also devised a way of producing insulin more cheaply, quickly and in greater volume than anywhere else in the world.