Main Factory Entry

The entry corridor of the Peters Creameries Pty Ltd factory at Chatham runs quiet now, its glass panels shattered and fragments spread across the tile floor. A green exit sign sits fixed above the door frame, pointing nowhere useful. Beyond the broken panes, trees have grown into the gap, pressing into the space the glass once held. Light comes in through the openings unevenly. Peters Creameries Pty Ltd broke ground in Chatham in 1938, with the building contract let to D. Gallagher, an experienced dairy factory builder who died before the work was finished. His estate completed it. The factory opened on 4 November 1939, before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, with the Minister for Works and Local Government officiating and free public access to tour the premises. The initial cost was approximately £60,000. The plant was purpose-built as a steam-driven dairy processing facility, drawing on four Babcock and Wilcox boilers and powered by machinery supplied by Richard Wildridge and Co. of Sydney. A riverside pump house delivered 25,000 gallons of water per hour for condensing operations. Milk and cream arrived by road and by river boat, collected from farms within a 20-mile radius for whole milk and 50 miles for cream, carried in part by two steamers named "Yankee Jack" and "Viola". Through the 1940s and 1950s, the site expanded under contractor A. J. Hayter, adding a canteen, recreation hall, gardens, and a swimming pool for workers. The factory was one node in a national Peters network that stretched from Sydney to Brisbane, Melbourne, and Perth. The late 1990s brought closure, as successive corporate owners rationalised production into fewer facilities. The building at Chatham remains standing. The tile floor, the exit sign, and the outline of the corridor are still there. The glass is not. Photographed in 2016.