Lunch Room

The lunch room of the Peters Creameries Pty Ltd factory at Chatham stands largely empty. Two ceiling fans are fixed motionless above a vast concrete floor. Locker units run along the wall beneath four steel-framed windows, their doors left in place. A desk and chair sit against the far wall. Graffiti marks the plaster. The room is functional in its layout and stripped of everything else. The factory was purpose-built as a steam-driven dairy processing plant on Railway Parade, Chatham, a suburb of Taree on the Manning River. Directors of Peters Creameries Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Peters' American Delicacy Co. Ltd, resolved to build here in 1938, purchasing the land from Christen Christensen and awarding the building contract to D. Gallagher. Gallagher died before the work was finished; his estate completed the job. The factory opened on 4 November 1939, before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, with the Minister for Works and Local Government officiating. A temporary stage was erected with broadcasting and amplification equipment, and the public was given free access to tour the premises. At opening, the facility was estimated to employ 25 workers initially, with capacity for 70 to 80 across three shifts. In the 1940s and 1950s, contractor A. J. Hayter oversaw extensive expansion on additional land. The site grew to include a canteen, a recreation hall, gardens, and a swimming pool. The lockers visible in this photograph are part of that expanded amenity infrastructure, built to serve a workforce that the Manning Valley came to depend on for approximately four decades. The factory closed in the late 1990s, its operations shifted to more modern facilities as part of corporate rationalisation under successive owners including Pacific Dunlop and Nestle. The building at Chatham remains standing. This photograph was made in 2016.