Sewing Machine

Inside the load-bearing brick walls of Mungo Scott Flour Mill, a sewing machine sits rusting on the timber floor. It is a small object in a building built for industrial scale, and that contrast is part of what makes it worth looking at. The mill's five-storey structure, with its timber post-and-beam interior and hipped metal-sheet roof, was designed around the movement of grain, not the kind of fine work a sewing machine implies. How it came to be there is not recorded. That it was left behind is clear enough. Mungo Scott Ltd began construction of the flour mill on Smith Street, Summer Hill, in 1921. The mill started operating in June 1922, the same month Mungo Scott vacated their previous premises on Sussex Street in the city. The site had been chosen specifically for its access to the Rozelle-Darling Harbour Goods Line, the World War I-era freight railway that ran along the eastern boundary. Grain arrived by rail, was raised to the top floor, and fed by gravity down through rollers and sifters, floor by floor, until it became flour, bagged and ready for dispatch. The mill survived a serious fire on 13 January 1927, when sparks from a passing train ignited stored flour, destroying a flour store and part of the mill along with approximately 10,000 bags of flour. It was rebuilt and continued operating. Concrete grain silos were added in the 1950s, and steel bulk storage silos followed in 1963. By the 2000s, Mungo Scott Flour Mill was the sole remaining customer on the Rozelle Goods Line. The final goods train delivered to the site on 1 December 2008. Milling operations ceased in 2009. This photograph was made in 2014, five years after the mill closed. The sewing machine, rust claiming its metal parts, sits on the floor of a building that has since been heritage-listed under the Ashfield LEP since 1985 and later redeveloped into a mixed-use precinct. At the time of photography, it remained as found.