Blacksmith Workshop

The blacksmith workshop at Portland Cement Works sits inside the broader Processing and Administrative Precinct on Williwa Street, Portland, NSW. In 2018, tools lay scattered across dusty benches as they had been left, heavy machinery stood idle and coated in grime, and rust had claimed the metal surfaces throughout. Nothing had been cleared. Nothing had been tidied. The room read as a record of the last day it was used. The works behind this workshop were built from 1901 under the direction of Dr August Wilhelm Karl Scheidel, a metallurgist appointed by the New Zealand Mines Trust to rebuild a cement operation that had failed twice under previous owners. Cement production began in 1902 under the Commonwealth Portland Cement Company, trading under the "Union" brand. By 1912, the company was producing approximately 40% of all Portland cement manufactured in Australia. At its peak in 1911, the workforce numbered 608 and the town population reached 2,376. The site changed hands several times across the twentieth century. Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers UK assumed ownership in the late 1940s. Blue Circle Southern Cement Ltd took over in 1974, followed by Boral Limited in 1992. Cement production ceased in November 1991. The limestone quarries continued supplying material to the Maldon works until 1998, when the last quarry was decommissioned and dismantling of the plant began. What the 2018 photograph records is the workshop as it had settled in the years since closure: tools at rest on benches, machinery locked in place by rust, surfaces blanketed in the slow accumulation of dust. The Portland Cement Works Precinct was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register on 3 August 2012 (SHR #01739), meeting all seven significance criteria. The site is now under redevelopment planning as The Foundations, though the workshop and its contents remain largely as found.