Sample Cool Room

The cool room inside the Peters Creameries Pty Ltd factory at Chatham holds almost nothing now. Paint has peeled away from the walls in layers, each coat a different decade's maintenance cycle, the whole sequence pulling free and curling toward the floor. Rusted pipes and fixtures trace the lines of a refrigeration system that has not run for years. The insulation has decayed and separated from the walls and ceiling, leaving the structure exposed. The concrete floor is bare. The factory that contained this room was built in 1938 and 1939 on land purchased from Christen Christensen in Chatham, a suburb of Taree on the Manning River. The building contractor was D. Gallagher, who died before the work 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. The construction cost was approximately £60,000. Peters Creameries Pty Ltd was a subsidiary of Peters' American Delicacy Co. Ltd, the company founded by American-born Frederick Augustus Bolles Peters in two rented rooms of a Paddington ice factory on 27 August 1907. By 1939, the Taree plant was one node in a national network spanning New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia. The factory ran as a steam-driven dairy processing plant, with four Babcock and Wilcox boilers in the boiler house and machinery supplied by Richard Wildridge and Co. of Sydney. A pump house on the Manning River supplied 25,000 gallons of water per hour for condensing operations. The plant manufactured condensed milk, butter, ice cream, milk powder, oil, and yoghurt across its operational life. In the 1940s and 1950s, the site expanded significantly under contractor A. J. Hayter, adding a canteen, recreation hall, gardens, and a swimming pool. The factory closed in the late 1990s as part of corporate rationalisation under successive owners. The building at Chatham still stands. This photograph was made in 2016.