Bicycle Against Pillar

A black road bicycle leans against a concrete pillar, its frame and wheels worn from years of sitting still. The floor around it is strewn with debris. Behind it, a weathered brick wall carries blue and red graffiti, a metal ladder fixed to the masonry and a red circular target mounted higher up. Nobody came back for the bike. The building around it is the former Davies Coop / Bradmill factory on Francis Street, Yarraville. Davies Coop & Co. Ltd began developing the West Footscray site in 1952, establishing a dyeing and finishing operation through a wholly owned subsidiary, Davies Coop (B.D.A.) Pty. Ltd., built around an agreement with the Bradford Dyers' Association Ltd of England and their proprietary "Rigmel" shrink-control process. By 1954, with the new dye house nearing completion, the company had purchased 40 acres at West Footscray. The manufacturing buildings on the site date from those early 1950s construction phases, their south-lit sawtooth roofs on trussed frames a transitional form in factory design, flooding the floors with even daylight when the looms were running. The site later operated under the Bradmill name and became one of Australia's major denim and workwear fabric manufacturers before operations ceased around 2001. During the dormant years between closure and redevelopment, the factory accumulated the evidence of its abandonment: graffiti layered across the brickwork, debris across the floors, and objects left behind by the people who had worked there or passed through since. A bicycle leaned against a pillar and stayed there. The photograph was taken in 2011, during the period the empty site was accessible before Frasers Property Australia and Irongate began their mixed-use redevelopment of the precinct. The heritage-listed boiler house and proofing building have been retained within the new development. The interior recorded here no longer exists in this form.