End of Office Block

The office block at Automatic Totalisators Limited's factory on Nancarrow Avenue, Meadowbank, was the administrative spine of a precision manufacturing operation that supplied racecourse betting equipment to 29 countries. By 2015, when this photograph was made, the block had long since emptied. Sunlight entered through broken windows. An office chair and a second seat loaded with a cardboard box remained among scattered paper and plastic debris. Peeling surfaces, stripped fittings. Nothing had been cleared; it had simply been left. The factory itself was purpose-built, completed in 1947 on land that had previously held a small orchard. Nancarrow Avenue was created as part of the development; the road did not exist before the factory was built. The main building housed the factory floor, warehouse, and offices. A separate structure on the same site provided dressing rooms, showers, and a canteen for the workforce. The Art Deco facade included an ATL diamond motif set into the foyer floor. Automatic Totalisators Limited had been incorporated on 21 April 1917. The Meadowbank site was the company's third and final manufacturing location, following earlier premises in Newtown and on Chalmers Street near Central Station. The factory produced mechanical and electromechanical totalisator systems, automatic turnstiles, hospital communication equipment, vehicle registration plates, and precision tooling. Between 1948 and 1955, equipment from Meadowbank was installed at 99 racetracks worldwide. The building was locally listed as a heritage item under Ryde Local Environmental Plan No 105 in 2003. Despite that listing, the Planning Assessment Commission approved its demolition in principle on 6 March 2013, as part of the Shepherds Bay Urban Renewal Concept Plan. The factory was demolished around 2016. Residential apartments now occupy the foreshore site. This photograph records the office block in its final state: dust, broken glass, and furniture nobody came back for.