Laboratory

The laboratory at Peters Creameries Pty Ltd's Chatham factory holds its last inventory in place: workbenches running along the walls, empty glass bottles still carrying faded labels, broken equipment spread across the floor in the dust that has settled over years of vacancy. A room that once supported the operation of a working dairy plant now records its own slow deterioration. The factory was purpose-built as a steam-driven dairy processing plant on Railway Parade, Chatham, a suburb of Taree on the Manning River in northern New South Wales. Building began in 1938 under contractor D. Gallagher, who died before the project was complete; his estate finished the job. The factory opened officially on 4 November 1939, before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, opened by the Minister for Works and Local Government. The build cost approximately £60,000, and initial capacity was estimated at 25 staff with room to expand to 70 or 80 across three shifts. The operating entity was Peters Creameries Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Peters' American Delicacy Co. Ltd, the company established in Paddington by American immigrant Frederick Augustus Peters on 27 August 1907. By 1939, the parent company had grown into a national network of facilities across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia. The Chatham plant was one node in that network, drawing milk from within a 20-mile radius and cream from within a 50-mile radius, much of it delivered by the river steamers "Yankee Jack" and "Viola" directly to a wharf on the Manning River bank. Steam-driven machinery processed up to 1,000 gallons of milk per hour, powered by four Babcock and Wilcox boilers. A NIRO milk powder spray-drying plant, commissioned in 1953, added a capacity of 1 tonne per hour. Products included condensed milk, butter, milk powder, oil, and yoghurt. The factory operated for close to six decades. Corporate ownership passed through successive hands, and by the late 1990s, rationalisation had moved production to more modern facilities. The building at Chatham was left standing. This photograph was made in 2016.