Production Packaging Room

The production packaging room of the Peters Creameries Pty Ltd factory at Chatham sits in a state of near-total stillness. Conveyor belts run along the floor, their belt surfaces and frame work coated in the same fine dust that covers the machinery beside them and the empty shelving that lines the walls. Nothing moves. Nothing has moved for years. The room records the end point of a production chain that once ran from the Manning River to refrigerated trucks bound for destinations up to 50 miles away. The factory that contains this room 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 the factory in 1938 and let the building contract to D. Gallagher, a contractor with extensive dairy factory construction experience. Gallagher died before the building was completed; his estate finished 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 and a temporary stage erected with broadcasting and amplification equipment. Cost at completion was approximately £60,000. The plant was steam-driven, with a milk processing capacity of 1,000 gallons per hour. It held four Babcock and Wilcox boilers in its boiler house and two large air compressors. Initial products were condensed milk and butter; the range expanded across subsequent decades to include milk powder, oil, and yoghurt. A NIRO milk powder spray-drying plant, commissioned in 1953, added a capacity of 1 tonne per hour. Through the 1940s and 1950s, contractor A. J. Hayter oversaw substantial expansion of the site. Staff amenities followed: a canteen, a recreation hall, gardens, and a swimming pool. The factory closed in the late 1990s, not by disaster but by corporate decision. Successive owners, including Pacific Dunlop and then Nestle, rationalised production into fewer, larger facilities. The building at Chatham remained standing. The photograph was made in 2016.