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01 Peters Ice Cream FactoryTaree2016
ISO 1001/6f/8.014mm
Series · 31 prints
Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap
Peters Creameries Pty Ltd Factory is a former milk products factory at Chatham in Taree, on the Manning River in New South Wales, opened on 4 November 1939. Peters Creameries, a subsidiary of Peters' American Delicacy Co. Ltd, built it for about £60,000 to take whole milk and cream from the district's dairy farms by lorry and river boat. The first buildings had brick walls, a corrugated fibro roof with glassed-in lantern roofs, steel-framed windows and twin boiler stacks about 70 feet high.
Peters Creameries Pty Ltd Factory was built to make milk products, with butter second. Its milk concentrating plant treated milk at 1,000 gallons an hour on a continuous process, and dried milk was made in an evaporator room 47 feet by 22 feet 3 inches, and 24 feet high. The building contractor, D. Gallagher, died before the work was finished, and his estate completed the contract.
The Minister for Works and Local Government, L. O. Martin, opened the factory on 4 November 1939 before more than 4,000 people. Two river boats were engaged to collect milk and cream, and the railway siding, Peter's Siding, was built to despatch finished products. By September 1940 Peters was spending about £30,000 on a new boiler house and a dried milk building. By 1944 trucks carried processed milk from Chatham to Nestle's factory at Smithtown on the Macleay River, and the boiler room was being enlarged for four new Babcock boilers.
By August 1949 the factory had 180 employees and more than 40 motor vehicles collecting from the farms. A staff block held a canteen upstairs, and the grounds had a tennis court and a concrete swimming pool 60 feet long, with salt water from the river.
On 18 December 1995 the members of Peters Creameries (Taree) Pty Limited resolved to wind the company up. Greater Taree Local Environmental Plan 2010 lists the former factory and its site as a local heritage item. Its inventory entry describes a two-storey brick milk receipt area, a dairy products manufacturing section and a large power generation area.
Wingham Chronicle (7 November 1939), Northern Champion (29 July 1939), Manning River Times (27 August 1949) and Greater Taree LEP 2010
Hand-signed and numbered, printed from the original RAW file. Open editions in the two smallest sizes; limited editions of 100, 50 and 25 in the three larger, never reissued once they sell through.
Made to order by Brett in Sydney, from the original RAW file. Each print is hand-signed and numbered before it ships.
Paper
Ilford Galerie cotton rag, 310 gsm. Acrylic on metallic gloss, 260 gsm.
Lead time
Unframed: 5 to 10 business days. Framed and acrylic: 10 to 20.
Peters' Ice Cream Factory was featured in the Manning River Times & National Trust Heritage Festival by Cundletown & Lower Manning Historical Society.
Read the noteOn Sunday 25 July 1948 the electricity supply to the Manning River County District was interrupted, and Peters Creameries gave back supply from its Taree factory. All the rural consumers, the Wingham Municipality and about two-thirds of Taree's consumers ran from it. The company could have supplied the whole county district, but one of its engines was under repair.
In April 1943 a truck carrying a milk vat of 4,000 gallons, built by the company itself, stood on the line beside the factory. It was fitted to attach to a passenger train, so milk loaded straight from the refrigerating vats reached Sydney in 8 hours, against 18 hours by goods train.
In 1951 Peters Creameries installed a spray-type plant for drying milk at Chatham, a pilot model for gaining experience before a large plant went into its Grafton factory. Milk entered the top of a cylinder in atomised form and was dried at once by preheated air. The older drier passed milk over hot steel rollers, and the powder was scraped off with long knives.
