Mezzanine

This photograph shows a mezzanine level inside the Mungo Scott Flour Mill at Summer Hill, NSW, captured in 2014, five years after milling operations ceased. Dust has settled across the concrete floor and the machinery left in place. Light enters through high windows cut into the load-bearing brick walls, tracing the structural bones of the five-storey building. The timber post-and-beam interior frame, characteristic of Federation Industrial construction, is evident in the scale and proportion of the space. The floor and the machinery it holds have been still for years. The mill began operating in June 1922, when Mungo Scott Ltd relocated from their previous premises on Sussex Street, Sydney, to this purpose-built site at 2-32 Smith Street, Summer Hill. Construction had started in 1921 on a site acquired from land the railway authority had resumed in 1912 and subsequently found surplus; Mungo Scott Ltd purchased it in 1916-1917 for £3,000. The location was chosen for the rail connection: a dedicated siding into the site gave the mill direct access to the Rozelle-Darling Harbour Goods Line, the WWI-era freight corridor that made the Summer Hill operation viable. A fire on 13 January 1927 destroyed a flour store and part of the mill; the blaze was believed to have been started by sparks from passing trains igniting stored flour. The mill was rebuilt and continued operating. Capacity expanded through the 1950s with the addition of concrete grain silo towers. By the 2000s, the Mungo Scott mill was the last remaining customer on the Rozelle Goods Line. The final goods train arrived on 1 December 2008. Operations ceased in 2009. The building carried local heritage listing under the Ashfield LEP since 1985. What the photograph now records is the mezzanine as it stood in 2014: machinery still in position, concrete floor undisturbed, light measuring out the silence of a space that had been active for almost ninety years.