Yarraville, Victoria - 1969-1996

Bradmill Denim

Bradmill Industries held the Levi's manufacturing licence for Australia from 1969 to 1996, producing denim at its Yarraville mill in Melbourne's inner west for the full 27 years. The mill wove, dyed, and finished the fabric that went into the most widely sold jeans brand in the country. When import competition from Asian manufacturers made domestic production uneconomical, the mill closed.

Textile manufacturing at this scale required specialised infrastructure. The loom shed housed wide industrial looms in long rows. The dye works ran the indigo and chemical processes that gave the fabric its colour. Finishing and quality control occupied separate areas. Workers moved fabric through a defined sequence from raw material to finished product.

Yarraville in the 1990s was already a contracting industrial suburb, with manufacturing closing across the area as Melbourne's economy restructured. The Bradmill closure was one of several. The mill building, too substantial to demolish without a development plan, sat after the looms were removed.

The photographs were made inside the mill in 2012, the earliest series in the Lost Collective collection. The production infrastructure remained largely intact.