Cooling Tower Supports

These concrete supports stand in open ground at the Mungo Scott Flour Mill site in Summer Hill, NSW. Photographed in 2014, they are among the ancillary structures that occupied the 2.4-hectare site during its industrial life. Whatever they supported overhead is gone; only the bases and uprights remain, exposed against the sky. The mill behind them began operating in June 1922, when Mungo Scott Ltd relocated from their previous premises on Sussex Street, Sydney. The firm had been established as Messrs Aitken and Scott in 1895, and the Summer Hill site was chosen deliberately for its access to the Rozelle-Darling Harbour Goods Line, a World War I-era freight railway that ran along the site's eastern boundary. Grain arrived by rail, was raised to the top floor of the five-storey load-bearing brick mill, and fed by gravity through rollers and sifters on successive floors below. The original 1921 mill and store were partially destroyed by fire on 13 January 1927, when sparks from passing trains ignited stored flour. Rebuilding followed. Concrete grain silos were added in the 1950s during the Goodman Fielder era, and new steel bulk storage silos were constructed in 1963. The site continued operating through successive owners until Allied Mills ceased milling in 2009. By 2014, when this photograph was made, the site had been sold to developer EG Funds Management and the concept plan for redevelopment had been approved. Stage 2 DA approval came through in October that same year. The supports in this frame record the industrial ground before it was cleared and rebuilt as the Flour Mill of Summer Hill, a mixed-use precinct of 360 dwellings across 11 buildings, with the heritage mill building and six silos retained. What these structures held is no longer determinable from the site; what remains is concrete, open air, and the record of a photograph made just before the transformation completed.