Raffan Mill

Raffan's Mill at Portland Cement Works predates the famous Commonwealth Portland Cement Company plant by more than a decade. Built around 1889 for George Raffan's lime and cement operation, the single-level brick structure measures 15.5 metres long, 12.7 metres wide, and 6.4 metres high. It once contained four 1,200 mm diameter Burr Stone Mills, their removable timber cogs held in place by pegs, grinding raw material in the early years of Portland's cement industry. George Raffan and Alexander Currie had acquired the Portland property in 1882, and by 1887 had formed the Cullen Bullen Lime and Marble Works. In 1889 the company reorganised as the Cullen Bullen Lime and Cement Company and became the first firm in New South Wales to successfully manufacture Portland cement. The mill that carries Raffan's name is a physical remnant of that earliest chapter. When the Cullen Bullen company failed in 1895, Raffan reopened as Ivanhoe Lime and Cement Works and Colliery, operating until 1898. The site was then sold to British-owned New Zealand Mines Trust in 1899, eventually passing to the Commonwealth Portland Cement Company, which commenced production on 4 August 1902 [verify against primary source]. The mill and the two surviving brick bottle kilns nearby are separately listed on the NSW State Heritage Register as Raffan's Mill and Brick Bottle Kilns, SHR #01738, gazetted 3 August 2012. Together they represent the genesis of the Portland cement industry in New South Wales. Photographed in 2018, the frame records what remains inside the mill: rusting machinery, crumbling concrete pillars, and the heavy silence of a brick structure that outlasted every company that ever operated it. The cavernous interior still reads as a working space, its dimensions and layout intact even as the materials within it continue to deteriorate. It is an early and rare survivor of colonial-era cement production in Australia, standing on a site that would go on to supply cement across the country for nearly a century.