Basement

The basement of ABBCO Bakery in Leichhardt is the lowest point of a building that once ran one of the largest independent bread operations in Australia. In this 2015 photograph, weak sunlight filters down through the structure and reaches the concrete floor, picking out walls marked by long exposure to moisture and the slow deterioration that follows abandonment. Pipes and conduits line the ceiling in fixed runs, still in position, no longer connected to anything active. The bakery at the Leichhardt site had been operating by at least April 1941, when Federal Royal Commissioner Mr Justice Maxwell visited the factory to observe bread production first-hand during an inquiry into bread weight violations and the reduction of a company fine. By 1973, the operation had grown to a scale that prompted Reg Boys, secretary of the Baking Trade Employees' Union of NSW, to describe it as the biggest independent bakery in Australia. The plant ran two roll machines producing six thousand dozen rolls per hour and baked bread through a 65-foot oven. Around 100 varieties were produced and distributed across Sydney through the company's own retail shops and wholesale channels. By the time Brett Patman made this photograph in 2015, the building had been abandoned. The basement was painted wall to wall and flooding in rain. The upper levels had become a dumping ground. The infrastructure visible in this frame, the pipes, the conduits, the raw concrete construction, is what remained of a building that had fed Sydney for decades. The factory was demolished after 2015. A Dan Murphy's liquor store now occupies the site on Darley Road. The photograph records what the basement looked like in the brief window between operation and erasure.