Basement Exit

The basement exit of the ABBCO Bakery sits frozen in decay, its walls stripped of paint, rubble collecting across the floor, machinery left where the last workers walked away. Light filters through the grime above, reaching down into a space that was part of one of Sydney's most significant industrial food operations. The company behind this building, Abbco Bread Co Pty Ltd, traced its origins to a NSW Government enterprise. In 1914, the government purchased a large brick bakery at 92-96 Percival Road, Stanmore, to regulate bread prices and prevent wartime profiteering. Around 1925, the facility passed into private hands and continued operating as the Automatic Bread Baking Company, known as ABBCO. By at least April 1941, when a Federal Royal Commission visited the Leichhardt site to observe bread baking first-hand, ABBCO was established at Darley Road. By 1973, the operation was substantial. Two roll machines produced six thousand dozen rolls per hour. A 65-foot oven ran continuously. Around 100 varieties of bread moved through the factory, carried on ceiling-mounted conveyer belts through a 50 to 60 minute cooling cycle before slicing, wrapping, and distribution across Sydney. The Baking Trade Employees' Union secretary described it as the biggest independent bakery in Australia. In September 1974, the bakery baked what was claimed as the longest loaf of bread in the world, a 140-foot loaf produced for the Freedom from Hunger Campaign, then carried through city streets by apprentices and displayed at Martin Place. By the time this photograph was made in 2015, the basement held old mattresses and furniture, flooding in rain, its walls painted over and over during decades of operation and then left to peel. The building has since been demolished. This frame is what remained.