Graffiti Door

The timber sliding door in this photograph is one of the more direct records of what the former Davies Coop / Bradmill factory, Yarraville, looked like during the years it sat empty. Its vertical boards are weathered and streaked with rust, and dark spray-painted lettering covers most of the face, with blue-outlined graffiti worked across the surface. Through the open gap beside it, a steel girder structure on lattice supports crosses the frame above yellow scaffolding bars, with a brick building visible behind it under an open sky. The site had been accumulating graffiti through the dormant period, and this door carries that record without apology. The factory on Francis Street was developed by Davies Coop and Co. Ltd from 1952, when the company formed a wholly owned subsidiary, Davies Coop (B.D.A.) Pty. Ltd., to run dyeing and finishing operations at West Footscray under licence to the Bradford Dyers' Association Ltd of England. The new dye house, begun that year, was expected to be completed by late 1954. The earliest manufacturing buildings on the site date from the early 1950s, their south-lit sawtooth roofs carried on trussed structures, a design that reflects a transition phase in factory construction between close-column and clear-span methods. The site later operated under the Bradmill name as a denim and workwear fabric manufacturer, one of the larger textile operations in the West Footscray and Brooklyn industrial belt. Textile production ceased at the site around 2001, with the complex finally vacated around 2007. By the time this photograph was made in 2012, the factory had been widely documented by photographers working through the empty buildings. The boiler house, the proofing building, and the Modernist canteen were identified for retention under the Maribyrnong Heritage Overlay HO125, which lists the site for its architectural, historic, and social significance. The rest of the complex, including this door and the girder structure visible beside it, was cleared as the site moved toward redevelopment. The photograph holds the detail of what was here.