Caged Area

Chain-link fencing divides a room from floor to ceiling at the former Melbourne Glass Bottle Works site in Spotswood, possibly a secured storage or parts area within one of the plant buildings. Inside the fencing sit a battered wooden desk and open shelves scattered with debris. Exposed wiring runs along a light green painted wall behind the desk, and a multi-paned window at the far end throws flat white light across the concrete floor. Pipework and a single fluorescent fitting hang from the ceiling above. The Spotswood site dates to 1890, when the Melbourne Glass Bottle Works purchased 12 acres on the Yarra and constructed a new manufacturing plant, complete with a branch railway siding to Spotswood station and a jetty for river shipping. By 1891 the works employed more than 220 men and ran continuously day and night. By 1908 the factory was producing 27 million bottles annually and supplying practically all the beer bottles in Australia. The operation passed through successive corporate identities across the following century. Australian Glass Manufacturers took over in 1915, renaming again as Australian Consolidated Industries in 1939 before BTR plc acquired the business in the late 1980s. Owens-Illinois completed its acquisition of BTR Packaging on 30 April 1998, folding the Spotswood site into the world's largest glass container manufacturer. A 19-week lockout of maintenance workers in 1996 and 1997 had preceded that handover, with 59 workers stood down while the future of the site was contested. The factory closed in January 2012. All buildings were demolished shortly after, the site paved with asphalt. Only the basalt wall on Douglas Parade, 115 metres long and 6 metres high, known to workers as the Great Wall of Spotswood, was preserved. This photograph records the fenced area as it stood in the final year before everything came down.