With Australia seeming to be the home of unusual Drummond lathes - as seen here, here, and here - two examples of yet another interesting early 3.5-inch flat-bed  have been discovered in that country - and two in the UK. With such obvious design points, features and detailing this machine could not be other than a Drummond (although it cannot be ruled out as a copy), and one must surmise that it was taken to Australia by Arthur Drummond, one of the founding brothers, on his visit during there the early years of the 20th century. The lathe appears to be a combination of the specification found on the pre and post-1912 versions, with the bed, headstock and tailstock of the former combined with the front leadscrew and dog-clutch arrangement of the latter. However, three significant differences stand out: the double bolt arrangement at the front of the headstock; a foot at the tailstock end of the bed and the "inverted" form of the cross-slide ways - though the latter arrangement was also employed on the first production Drummond and later 5-inch models - but with longitudinal rather than transverse T-slots. Whilst the post 1912 models had a useful automatic disengage fitted to the carriage drive, this model has just a hand-operated lever on the dog clutch. Other, more subtle differences also occur, some detailed with the illustrations below.
Of course, one cannot ever be absolutely sure that this lathe is a Drummond but several possibilities exist--the favourite being that a large machine-tool merchant ordered a quantity to be produced anonymously that incorporated his own modifications. With only three known survivors it cannot be that more than 40 or 50 would have been made - and for a rival company to tool up (for a relatively complex small lathe) such numbers would make no sense.. There is also the chance that during his visit to Australia Arthur Drummond negotiated a deal whereby a firm built his design under licence - and that may well be the simplest explanation for the antipodean examples. If you have a similar lathe, the writer would be delighted to hear from you.