Office at Peters Ice Cream Factory, another former production managers office.

Administration Office

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 6s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The administration office of the former Peters Creameries factory at Chatham. 'The Ravano Famy' is scrawled across the whiteboard on the far wall among other drawings and text, with two light-grey plastic chairs facing it from the centre of the room. Wooden wainscoting lines the lower walls, a large roll of white paper spills across the dark carpet, and a wooden cabinet stands open to the left beneath fluorescent fittings.

Edition

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Administration Office
Series: Peters Ice Cream Factory
Catalogue: PIC-001
Process: Giclée
Captured: 14 February 2016
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 6s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 297 × 210 mm
Location: Taree, New South Wales, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Taree, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The administration office of Peters Creameries Pty Ltd's Chatham factory is a small room that has not been cleared since the plant stopped operating in the late 1990s. Desks sit where they were last pushed back. Chairs remain at angles suggesting someone simply walked away. Papers and files cover the floor, and dust has settled over every surface in a fine, even layer. Sunlight enters the room and picks out the detail of what has been left behind. The factory was built in Chatham on land purchased from Christen Christensen in 1938. The building contract was let to D. Gallagher, an experienced dairy factory contractor who died before the building was finished; his estate completed the work. The plant opened officially on 4 November 1939, before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, and was launched by the Minister for Works and Local Government. Initial staff capacity was estimated at 70 to 80 workers across three shifts, with primary production of condensed milk and butter from milk collected within a 20-mile radius and cream sourced within a 50-mile radius. The factory was one node in a national network established by Frederick Augustus Bolles Peters, who had founded Peters' American Delicacy Co. Ltd in two rented rooms of a Paddington ice factory on 27 August 1907. By the time the Chatham plant opened, the company had spread across NSW, Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia. The £60,000 steam-driven plant on the Manning River was the company's reach into the mid-North Coast dairy belt. Through the 1940s and 1950s the site expanded under contractor A. J. Hayter, adding a canteen, recreation hall, gardens, and a swimming pool for workers. The boiler house ran four Babcock and Wilcox boilers. A NIRO milk powder spray-drying plant, commissioned in 1953, processed 1 tonne per hour. Corporate rationalisation under successive owners consolidated production elsewhere. The plant closed in the late 1990s. The building remains at Chatham, largely empty. The administration office, recorded here in 2016, holds the last paperwork of a factory that once employed most of the Manning Valley.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

The administration office of Peters Creameries Pty Ltd's Chatham factory sits as it was left when the plant closed in the late 1990s. Desks and chairs remain, papers and files on the floor, dust over everything. The factory opened on 4 November 1939 before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, with initial capacity for 70 to 80 workers across three shifts. Corporate rationalisation under successive owners eventually ended operations, and the building has stood abandoned since.

Brett Patman

The series

Peters Ice Cream Factory

2016 · 31 photographs

Peters Ice Cream Factory opened on 4 November 1939 on the bank of the Manning River at Chatham, a suburb of Taree. The opening drew approximately 5,000 people. Peters Creameries built the plant for around £60,000, with a steam-driven capacity of 1,000 gallons of milk per hour and a boiler house running four Babcock and Wilcox boilers. Cream was delivered by boat from farms along the Manning River for four decades, a trade that ran until around the 1970s. The factory made ice cream, butter, milk powder, oil, and yoghurt, and was the main employer in the Manning Valley until it closed in the late 1990s. The building still stands at Chatham, deteriorating. Listed in 1990 on the local heritage register (Greater Taree, now MidCoast Council).

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

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