Laboratory Wall

The laboratory wall sits inside the former Peters Creameries factory on Railway Parade, Chatham, a suburb of Taree on the Manning River in New South Wales. Paint has lifted from the surface in layers, each one a record of a different period in the building's working life. The wall is stained and discoloured, the substrate exposed where the coatings have curled away. The room is empty. The factory was purpose-built as a steam-driven dairy processing plant. Directors of Peters Creameries Pty Ltd resolved to build at Taree in 1938, purchasing land from Christen Christensen and letting the building contract to D. Gallagher, an experienced dairy factory builder who died before the work was finished. His estate completed the contract. By August 1939, the factory was reported nearing completion at a cost of approximately £60,000, with initial staffing estimated at 25 and capacity across three shifts for 70 to 80 workers. The official opening took place on 4 November 1939, before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, addressed by the Minister for Works and Local Government. A temporary stage carried broadcasting and amplification equipment, and the public was given free access to tour the premises. Steam-driven machinery with a capacity of 1,000 gallons of milk per hour drove production. Four Babcock and Wilcox boilers powered the plant. A riverside pump house drew 25,000 gallons of water per hour for condensing operations. Cream and milk arrived at the factory by river and by road from farms across the Manning Valley. The factory was one node in a national Peters network, manufacturing condensed milk, butter, and later milk powder, ice cream, oil, and yoghurt. A NIRO milk powder spray-drying plant, commissioned in 1953, added a capacity of 1 tonne per hour. The plant operated until the late 1990s, when successive corporate owners rationalised production into fewer, larger facilities and closed the Chatham site. The building has stood empty since. Brett Patman photographed the factory interior in 2016.