Raw Milk Silos

The silos stand at the core of what was once one of the Manning Valley's most productive industrial sites. Curved, riveted, and now streaked with rust, their metal walls bear the physical record of decades in service. Filtered light catches the surface corrosion, the peeling coatings, the debris settled at the base. Nothing moves in the frame. The scale of the vessels still reads clearly. Peters Creameries Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Peters' American Delicacy Co. Ltd, purchased land in Chatham from Christen Christensen in 1938 and engaged building contractor D. Gallagher to construct the factory. Gallagher died before the building was complete; his estate finished the job. The factory opened officially on 4 November 1939 before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, with the Minister for Works and Local Government presiding and a temporary stage fitted with broadcasting and amplification equipment for the occasion. Construction had cost approximately £60,000. The plant was steam-driven, with a processing capacity of 1,000 gallons of milk per hour. Four Babcock and Wilcox boilers powered the operation. Raw milk and cream arrived from farms within a 20-mile and 50-mile radius respectively, collected by the river steamers "Yankee Jack" and "Viola" from individual farm wharves along the Manning River, and by contract lorries servicing the outlying areas. A riverside pump house supplied 25,000 gallons of water per hour for condensing operations. Initial products were condensed milk and butter; the range expanded over the following decades to include ice cream, milk powder, oil, and yoghurt. The 1940s and 1950s brought major expansion under contractor A. J. Hayter, adding amenity buildings including a canteen, a recreation hall, gardens, and a swimming pool. The river cream boat deliveries continued for approximately four decades before ceasing in the 1970s. Successive corporate owners consolidated Peters' national production into fewer, larger facilities through the 1980s and 1990s. The Chatham factory closed in the late 1990s. These photographs were made in 2016.