Main Floor To Mezzanine

The iron staircase connecting the main floor to the mezzanine at the ABBCO Bakery in Leichhardt is rusted through, its paint peeling back to bare metal, the treads and railings worn by decades of use and then left to the dust. Graffiti and street art cover the surrounding walls and the roller door, and the ceiling height is consistent with industrial-scale production. Light falls across the main floor, picking out the texture of rust and dust. The bakery's origins trace back to the NSW State Bakery, a government operation established in 1914 at 92-96 Percival Road, Stanmore, built to regulate bread supply and prevent wartime profiteering. Around 1925, the government sold the operation into private hands. The McLeod family took ownership and the business continued as the Automatic Bread Baking Company, giving the abbreviated name ABBCO to the Abbco Bread Co Pty Ltd that would run the Leichhardt facility for decades. By April 1941, the Leichhardt bakery was operating at sufficient scale to attract a Federal Royal Commission. Mr Justice Maxwell visited the factory in person to observe bread baking first-hand, and a preliminary sitting followed at the Supreme Court. The inquiry centred on a ministerial reduction of a fine imposed on ABBCO and, separately, on flour quality complaints from the factory floor. Foreman George Upwood had raised concerns about sticky dough and difficulty achieving proper loaf weight. Inspector of weights and measures Hugh Allen had found weight deficiencies during inspections. By 1973, the Baking Trade Employees' Union of NSW described ABBCO as the biggest independent bakery in Australia. The factory ran a 65-foot oven and produced around 100 types of bread in various shapes, distributed across Sydney via wholesale channels. In September 1974, the bakery baked what was claimed to be the longest loaf of bread in the world, a 140-foot loaf twisted into a U-shape because of traffic difficulties, carried through the streets by apprentice bakers and displayed at Martin Place for the Freedom from Hunger Campaign. The building at Darley Road, Leichhardt was abandoned by 2015, its upper levels used as a dumping ground, its basement flooded in wet weather. Brett Patman photographed the facility in November 2015. The staircase in this frame, rusted and still, records what remains of a production floor that once ran continuously. The building has since been demolished.