Workshop

The workshop of the Mungo Scott Flour Mill sits inside a load-bearing brick building with a timber post-and-beam internal structure, a form that has stood on Smith Street, Summer Hill since 1921. The corrugated iron ceiling overhead and the concrete floor underfoot are the bones of a working space: no pretension, no finish. A steel workbench on castors sits against the far wall, still positioned as if someone left mid-task. A large sheet of metal leans against a partition wall. Behind it, a collapsed office chair settles into the floor. These are not the dramatic remnants of heavy industry. They are the quieter evidence of maintenance: the tools and materials kept on hand to service rollers, sifters, and the gravity-fed infrastructure that ran through the floors above. The mill began operating in June 1922, when Mungo Scott Ltd vacated their previous premises on Sussex Street and moved production to Summer Hill, drawn specifically by the Rozelle-Darling Harbour Goods Line running along the eastern boundary. Grain arrived by rail, was lifted to the top floor, and worked downward through progressively finer machinery before being bagged and dispatched. A fire on 13 January 1927 destroyed a flour store and part of the mill, but the operation rebuilt and continued. The 1950s brought concrete grain silos; 1963 brought new steel bulk storage. The mill ran under Mungo Scott Ltd, then Goodman Fielder, then Allied Mills, before milling operations ceased in 2009. By the time this photograph was made in 2014, the site had already been sold and a concept plan approved. The workbench, the metal sheet, and the chair are what remained of the workshop that kept ninety years of production running.