Testing Room

The testing room at Portland Cement Works Precinct is a small, contained space within a much larger operation. Benches line the walls. Dust has settled across every surface. Equipment sits where it was left. The room is intact in the way that only forgotten rooms tend to be. Portland Cement Works Precinct sits on Williwa Street in Portland, City of Lithgow, in the NSW Central Tablelands. The Commonwealth Portland Cement Company registered in December 1900 and began cement production on the site in 1902 under the "Union" brand. From an initial capacity of roughly 12 tonnes per day and 150 workers, the operation grew steadily through the Federation era and into the twentieth century, reaching an annual production capacity of 226,796 tonnes of cement and 18,144 tonnes of lime by 1959. At its peak in 1912, the company was producing approximately 40% of all Portland cement manufactured in Australia. The works changed hands several times over its operational life. Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers UK assumed ownership in the late 1940s. Blue Circle Southern Cement Ltd took over in 1974, and Boral Limited acquired the site in 1992. Through each ownership change, the plant kept running. Cement production finally ceased in November 1991. The limestone quarries continued supplying crushing material to the Maldon works until the last quarry was decommissioned in 1998. The testing room records a specific function within that long operational history: product quality control. The benches, the equipment, the layout of the space all point to a room designed for precise, methodical work. Now it is precise in a different way. Nothing has moved. The dust is even. The 2018 photograph holds the room exactly as it was found, within a precinct listed on the NSW State Heritage Register in 2012 (SHR #01739).