Blower

The blower in this photograph is coated in flour dust so thick it has become a surface in its own right. Fine and pale, the dust sits in the same even layer across the metal housing, the fittings, and the floor around the machine's base. Nothing in the frame has been disturbed. The mill was still when this photograph was made in 2014, five years after the last shift. Mungo Scott Ltd began construction of the flour mill on Smith Street, Summer Hill, in 1921. Milling operations commenced in June 1922, when the company vacated their earlier premises on Sussex Street, Sydney. The five-storey mill was built with load-bearing brick walls and a timber post-and-beam internal structure, its form shaped by function: grain arrived by rail to the mill's own siding, was raised to the top floor, and fed by gravity downward through progressively finer rollers and sifters. A blower of this kind would have moved air through those production lines, managing the dust and heat generated by continuous milling. The mill survived a serious fire on 13 January 1927, when sparks from passing trains on the adjacent goods line ignited stored flour and destroyed part of the building along with approximately 10,000 bags of flour and offal. The mill was rebuilt and continued operating. Ownership passed through Goodman Fielder and later Allied Mills over the following decades, with concrete grain silos added in the 1950s and steel bulk storage silos constructed in 1963. By the 2000s the Mungo Scott mill was the last remaining customer on the Rozelle-Darling Harbour Goods Line. The final goods train delivered to the site on 1 December 2008. Milling operations ceased the following year, in 2009. The site was heritage-listed under the Ashfield LEP, a status it has held since 1985. This blower records what the mill looked like in the years between closure and redevelopment. Dust settled. Machinery stayed in place. The photograph holds that interval.