Amenities Block

The amenities block at Peters Creameries Pty Ltd's Chatham factory is one of the quieter corners of a site that was once the Manning Valley's largest employer. Tiled walls, now crumbling, line the interior. Basins and pipework remain fixed to the walls, rust running in long streaks from fittings that have not seen water in decades. Streaks of light cross the dusty space, revealing surfaces that have been slowly deteriorating since the factory closed in the late 1990s. Peters Creameries Pty Ltd opened the factory in Chatham on 4 November 1939, before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people. The original building, constructed by contractor D. Gallagher at a cost of approximately £60,000, housed a steam-driven dairy plant with a capacity of 1,000 gallons of milk per hour, powered by four Babcock and Wilcox boilers. Initial production focused on condensed milk and butter, with milk collected from farms within a 20-mile radius and cream sourced from within 50 miles, much of it arriving by river boat along the Manning River. Through the 1940s and 1950s, the factory expanded significantly under contractor A. J. Hayter. Staff amenities were added to the site during this period: a canteen, a recreation hall, gardens, and a swimming pool. The amenities block photographed here belongs to this expansion phase, built to serve a workforce running a plant that had grown well beyond its original footprint. The factory operated for approximately six decades. It survived the war years, the cream-boat era on the Manning River, and successive changes of corporate ownership. What closed it in the late 1990s was rationalisation, as production was consolidated into more modern facilities elsewhere. The building at Chatham remains standing, largely empty and vandalised. Brett Patman photographed the interior in 2016, the same year a Dairy Factory Reunion was held at the site as part of the National Trust Heritage Festival.