Powder Room Window

The powder room of the former Peters Creameries Pty Ltd factory in Chatham sits largely empty now. A single window admits what light it can through glass clouded by years of neglect. Peeling paint and cracked tiles cover the walls, the surfaces pulling away in layers, each one recording a different decade of the building's long stillness. The factory itself was purpose-built as a steam-driven dairy processing plant. Directors of Peters Creameries Pty Ltd resolved to build at Chatham in 1938, purchasing land from Christen Christensen and awarding the building contract to D. Gallagher, a contractor with extensive dairy factory experience who died before the work was finished. His estate completed the job. The official opening took place on 4 November 1939, before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, with the Minister for Works and Local Government in attendance. The factory had cost approximately £60,000 and was estimated to employ 25 workers initially, with capacity across three shifts for 70 to 80. The plant processed milk and cream drawn from farms within a 20-mile radius, with cream sourced from as far as 50 miles away. River deliveries arrived by boat at a wharf on the Manning River bank. A steam plant drove machinery capable of processing 1,000 gallons of milk per hour, supported by four Babcock and Wilcox boilers and two large air compressors. A NIRO milk powder spray-drying plant, commissioned in 1953, added a capacity of 1 tonne per hour. Products included condensed milk, butter, and milk powder. The factory ran through expansion decades, changing corporate ownership, and the slow end of river cream-boat collections. It closed in the late 1990s as part of a rationalisation that concentrated Peters production into larger, more modern facilities. The building remains at Chatham, largely empty and vandalised, the powder room window still admitting light into a room that has not been in use for decades.