Hazardous Chemicals Sign

The "Danger Hazardous Chemicals" sign is still bolted to the brick wall, directly beside an open timber doorway. The brickwork around it is weathered but intact. Through the doorway, metal cabinets line the walls, storage racks hold what has been left behind, a grey cloth is draped across a surface, and on the far wall an exit sign is still illuminated. Whether the power source feeding that sign was a residual connection or a battery backup, the effect is the same: a room that looks less abandoned than simply unattended. The former Davies Coop / Bradmill factory on Francis Street, Yarraville, was built in stages from 1952. Davies Coop & Co. Ltd began developing the West Footscray site that year through a wholly owned subsidiary, Davies Coop (B.D.A.) Pty. Ltd., after entering an agreement with the Bradford Dyers' Association Ltd of England for the exclusive Australian rights to the "Rigmel" shrink-control process. By September 1954 the company reported a record profit year; the new dye house, started in 1952, was expected to be finished by November. The company had purchased 40 acres at West Footscray for the purpose. The site later operated under the Bradmill name as a major denim and workwear fabric manufacturer, part of the broader West Footscray and Yarraville industrial belt that formed one of Melbourne's heaviest concentrations of post-war manufacturing. Operations ceased around 2001, with the site finally vacated around 2007, part of the wider post-tariff collapse of Australian textile manufacturing. The manufacturing buildings are locally heritage-listed under Maribyrnong Heritage Overlay HO125 for their transitional sawtooth-on-trusses design, with the boiler house, proofing building, and canteen retained through the subsequent residential redevelopment. This photograph, made in 2011, records the site during the dormant years between closure and that redevelopment, a window that no longer exists.