Abandoned Workbench

The workbench is long and practical, its laminate top worn to the texture of something handled daily for decades. A chisel and a few small items remain on the surface. Below, the cabinet doors hang open or have come away entirely, one leaning against the side of the unit. Coiled hose and debris occupy the shelf underneath. Across the painted brick and rendered wall behind the bench, faded paper documents are still pinned in place, whatever instructions or diagrams they once carried now too bleached to read clearly. The factory those documents once served was built up over decades by two companies. Davies Coop & Co. Ltd began developing the Francis Street site from 1952, constructing a dye house through a subsidiary, Davies Coop (B.D.A.) Pty. Ltd., under an agreement with the Bradford Dyers' Association of England and using their proprietary "Rigmel" shrink-control process. By 1954 the company had purchased 40 acres at West Footscray and the new dye house was nearing completion. The site later operated under the Bradmill name and became a significant Australian denim and workwear fabric manufacturer, part of the wider West Footscray and Brooklyn industrial belt that defined post-war manufacturing in Melbourne's inner west. The factory is locally listed under Maribyrnong Heritage Overlay HO125 for its architectural, social and historic significance. The boiler house, proofing building and Modernist canteen are the fabric carried through into the current mixed-use redevelopment by Frasers Property Australia and Irongate. The manufacturing spaces where a bench like this one stood have not survived. This photograph was made in 2011, during the years the site sat empty between the end of textile production and the beginning of construction. The chisel on the bench, the documents on the wall, the detached cabinet door: none of it was arranged. It was simply what remained.