A small utility room in the production engineering department. Exposed plumbing runs to a grimy ceramic sink on the left wall, beside a teal-painted door hanging open on a broken wired-glass pane. Clear plastic sheeting covers a metal shelving unit and pools across the floor. Daylight enters through 2 large gridded windows with frosted glass.
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The room photographed here was the production engineering department of the ATL Building in Meadowbank. The room is small. Exposed plumbing runs to a grimy ceramic sink on the left wall, beside a teal-painted door hanging open on a broken wired-glass pane. Clear plastic sheeting covers a metal shelving unit and pools across the floor. Daylight enters through two large gridded windows with frosted glass. The ATL Building was constructed in 1947 as a purpose-built factory for Automatic Totalisators Limited, the company founded by Sir George Alfred Julius on 21 April 1917. Julius, a mechanical engineer who graduated from Canterbury College alongside Ernest Rutherford, had conceived the automatic totalisator as a vote-counting machine before pivoting to racecourse betting after governments showed no interest. The Meadowbank factory was the company's third and final manufacturing site, following earlier premises in Newtown and in the city. The building was designed by Julius's own engineering firm, Julius, Poole & Gibson. Julius himself died on 28 June 1946, months before the factory was completed. From Meadowbank, Automatic Totalisators Limited produced precision mechanical and electromechanical totalisator systems for racecourses across 29 countries. The company also manufactured automatic turnstiles, hospital communication systems, motor vehicle registration plates, and commercial signs. As electromechanical systems gave way to electronic and computer systems through the 1970s and 1980s, manufacturing at the site declined. Smorgan acquired ATL's operations in 1980, and AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd) purchased them from Smorgan around 1988. Through the 1990s and 2000s, the building was repurposed as a multi-tenant facility: a gym, a church, office space, and a dance school moved through its rooms. The factory was listed as a local heritage item under Ryde Local Environmental Plan No 105 in 2003. The Planning Assessment Commission approved the Shepherds Bay Urban Renewal Concept Plan on 6 March 2013, which included in-principle approval for demolition of the heritage-listed building. The ATL Building was demolished circa 2016. Residential apartments now occupy the Shepherds Bay foreshore.
04·FROM THE FIELD NOTES
A small utility room in the production engineering department.
Brett Patman
The series
ATL Building
14
photographs
The ATL Building was the factory and offices of Automatic Totalisators Limited on Nancarrow Avenue at Meadowbank in Sydney, built in 1947 on land fronting the Parramatta River. The company made totalisator equipment for racecourse betting there, and the building served as its factory from 1947 until the 1970s. Ryde Local Environmental Plan No 105 listed it as a local heritage item in 2003, and the Sydney East Joint Regional Planning Panel approved its demolition in December 2015.
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