Boiler House Facade

The boiler house at Peters Creameries Pty Ltd Factory in Chatham was the engine room of a steam-driven dairy operation that processed up to 1,000 gallons of milk per hour. Four Babcock and Wilcox boilers sat behind this facade, generating the steam that powered machinery supplied by Richard Wildridge and Co. of Sydney. The factory also ran two large air compressors alongside that boiler plant. What remains now is exposed brickwork, emptied window openings, and the kind of slow structural deterioration that sets in when a building loses its purpose. The factory at Railway Parade, Chatham was purpose-built for Peters Creameries Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Peters' American Delicacy Co. Ltd. The building contract went to D. Gallagher in 1938; he died before the factory was finished, and his estate completed the work. On 4 November 1939, approximately 5,000 people gathered at the site for the official opening, conducted by the Minister for Works and Local Government. The plant's initial products were condensed milk and butter, with milk collected within a 20-mile radius and cream sourced within a 50-mile radius, partly by two river steamers named "Yankee Jack" and "Viola" working the Manning River wharves. The factory expanded substantially through the 1940s and 1950s under contractor A. J. Hayter, adding amenity buildings including a canteen, recreation hall, gardens, and a swimming pool. A NIRO milk powder spray-drying plant was commissioned in 1953 with a capacity of one tonne per hour. The site ran as a multi-product dairy facility producing ice cream, butter, milk powder, oil, and yoghurt across its operational life. In the mid-1990s, Pacific Dunlop sold the Peters ice cream division to Nestle, and corporate rationalisation followed. The Chatham factory closed in the late 1990s. The boiler house facade, photographed here in 2016, records what that process leaves behind: a solid industrial building with nothing left inside it to justify the walls.