Opened in October on Doepel Street, built by local builder George Moore for the Upper Bellingen Co-operative Society Ltd. A fifteen-horsepower steam engine, a 30cwt compressor and a cream cooling plant. Fifteen hundredweight of butter in the first week. The photograph is undated, and is not of the opening.
1919 · 13 YEARS ON
191913 YEARS ON
A bacon factory is added
A bacon factory is added alongside the butter works, the income that carried the site through the next forty years. The site stops being one thing. The photograph is c.1920; none of 1919 is held.
1927 · £9,229
1927£9,229
The completed factory upgrade
Rebuilt May 1926 to July 1927 in reinforced concrete, on unique concrete arch beams. Engineered by Richard Wildridge and built by Thackray & Gallagher: “the last word in modern factories”, and one of the finest in the state.
1950 · 23 YEARS ON
195023 YEARS ON
The aftermath of the flood
The devastating flood takes the valley. The Raleigh factory is sold off after the damage; this building survives it.
1963 · 57 YEARS OF BUTTER
196357 YEARS OF BUTTER
Butter production ceases
Butter production ceases after fifty-seven years, three years after the two dairy societies amalgamated and moved everything to Raleigh. The churns stop, and the building has no job. The photograph is the 1930s working floor.
1975 · 12 YEARS SILENT
197512 YEARS SILENT
Converted to a private home
Converted to a private home. Somebody moves in, and for a decade the most modern building in the state is a house. The photograph is the c.1930 cooling coils, still in the wall.
1991 · THE 85TH YEAR
1991THE 85TH YEAR
The doors open again
Bought and developed as a craft and tourist complex in 1985, and in 1991 the doors open again, this time to the public, with a kitchen in it. The photograph is the 1927 plate; the façade did not change.
2026 · 8AM – 3PM
20268AM – 3PM
Breakfast, seven days
The centenary plaque was unveiled on 1 October 2006. Breakfast seven days a week now, in the same room: you are eating in the most modern building in the state, of 1927.
TODAY · 99 YEARS ON
TODAY99 YEARS ON
The room, hired
Ninety-nine years on, the engineering is still the room. The unique concrete arch beams from the record, the reason it was called the last word in modern factories, are still holding the roof up, and there is a party underneath them. A hundred at the tables, a hundred and twenty standing.
The record · 1906 to this morning
The last word in modern factories. Now it does breakfast.
A hundred and twenty years of the building on Doepel Street. Keep scrolling and the door opens, one photograph at a time.
Forty in the function room. Eighty across the café.
Weddings, birthdays, Christmas parties, baby showers, and the breakfast the morning after. The gardens and walkways carry a ceremony; the room under the 1927 beams carries the rest of the day.
@oldbutterfactorycafe
