Industrial Courtyard

The concrete yard sits enclosed on at least two sides: a tall rendered wall to one side, a brick building to another, the whole space open only to a flat overcast sky. Disused ducting clings to the wall. Metal drums and a galvanised tub have been left on the slab. Wall brackets and severed pipework show where plant was once fixed and has since been removed. Debris is scattered across the yard floor. Nothing here has been arranged for effect. It is simply what remained. The Francis Street site in Yarraville was developed from 1952 by Davies Coop & Co. Ltd, a vertically integrated cotton company that spun in Adelaide, wove in Sydney, and chose West Footscray for its dyeing and finishing arm. The decision to build here followed an agreement with the Bradford Dyers' Association Ltd of England, giving Davies Coop exclusive Australian rights to the "Rigmel" shrink-control process. A wholly owned subsidiary, Davies Coop (B.D.A.) Pty. Ltd., was formed to run the new plant. By 1954, Davies Coop reported the dye house, started two years earlier, was expected to be finished by November of that year. Later in the twentieth century the site operated under the Bradmill name, becoming a significant Australian denim and workwear fabric manufacturer within the West Footscray and Brooklyn industrial belt. Manufacturing continued into the early 2000s, when operations ceased following the wind-back of tariff protection and competition from cheaper imports. The site was finally vacated around 2007. By 2011, when Brett Patman photographed it, the buildings and yards had been sitting empty for several years. What is visible in this frame is a yard stripped of most of its working infrastructure, with only the fixed points and the debris left behind. The former Davies Coop / Bradmill factory in Yarraville has since been redeveloped as a mixed-use residential precinct, with the heritage-listed boiler house and proofing building retained. This courtyard, as it appeared in 2011, is gone.