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Jackett's
Flour Mill, Strathfield
By Gordon Jackett, 1996
For many years the flour mill in Beresford Road was a landmark in Strathfield,
and although now demolished, the big concrete silos erected since World War II
are still standing. The original mill had almost as large and almost as high
silos made of wood and set in corrugated iron shedding.
The flour mill was originally owned by Mr Joseph Chicken, but I am not aware of
when it was erected, though I imagine it must have been somewhere about the turn
of the century. I do know that he might have been thinking of selling in
November 1911, for my father visited the mill while on his honeymoon after his
marriage in Adelaide. At that time my father had just been made a partner in
Jackett Bros, being manager of that firm’s Port Adelaide flour mill.
Jackett Bros had been established in the north country of South Australia by my
grandfather Jonathan Jackett and my great uncle William Jackett, who had come
from Wadebridge in Cornwall where in the late 1860s they had both served an
apprenticeship in stone dressing at the local flour mill. Flour milling in those
days had not extended beyond the system of grinding two flat stones of about
five feet in diameter against each other. The wheat was poured through the
centre of the upper stone and grooves were cut in the lower stone to allow the
ground wheat to flow outwards where it was collected and sifted through silken
cloth.
South Australia was a favourite colony for Cornishmen, for there were then tin
mines at Moonta and both William and Jonathan became millers in the Port Augusta
and Port Pirie areas. It was not long before they had the opportunity to build a
flour mill at Mintaro and prospered. In the course of about ten years they
established mills at Morgan and Auburn, William at Auburn and Jonathan at
Morgan.
My father who was born in 1887 started work in the Morgan mill at 12 years of
age, working 72 hours a week, but being extremely good at mental arithmetic was
sent out on the paddle steamers plying the Murray and the Darling, buying wheat
and selling flour.
It was at about this time that the firm built a new mill at Saddleworth with the
latest equipment from England in roller milling, a much more involved process
which completely revolutionised flour milling and improved not only the quality
of flour, but enabled a greater amount to be extracted from the bran.
The mill at Port Adelaide was acquired early in the new century and the Morgan
mill was converted to roller milling while the others were phased out.
Towards the end of the Great War in 1918 Mr Chicken decided to sell the
Strathfield mill and my father prevailed upon the partnership to buy
it. We arrived in Strathfield at the beginning of December 1918, and I can
clearly remember visiting the mill soon after. At that time it was not as large
as it became about three years later.
The mill buildings were in a large area of land and had their own railway
siding. The main building was four stories high, built of brick behind which
wider corrugated iron buildings of two stories lined the railway sidings. Beside
the main brick building on the western side was the engine room where a large
steam engine manufactured in Mannheim, Germany drove all the machinery. At its
side to the north was a large pond about twenty feet by ten, in which a big high
wooden structure cooled the water from the boiler. On each side of the boiler
and pistons were eight foot in diameter flywheels from which leather belts drove
the entire machinery of the mill, not only in the main brick building but the
cleaning of wheat coming off the railway trucks, and lifting the wheat to the
silos at the back of the corrugated iron section of the premises.
Opposite the engine-room were enormous stockpiles of coal which came in sacks
and had been carried in hand trolleys from the railway siding. As a small boy
the engine room at once fascinated and frightened me, for the noise of the belts
careering round the two flywheels and flapping into the mill was a real
exhibition of power. The engine driver was a Strathfield man named Arthur Corp,
who had three sons who worked in the mill for many years.
The main brick building had obviously been built for the roller milling process.
It worked in this way. Wheat drawn from the various silos in accordance with the
miller’s choice of varieties, was then moistened carefully to facilitate its
progress through the mill. On the first floor were banks of steel rollers, the
first four sets grooved, the remainder smooth. The rollers were pressed against
each other, the first four grooved ones taking the wheat and cutting it open and
scraping all the flour and flour in the form of semolina from the skin of the
wheat. From the roller floor wooden pipes led from the various rollers to
elevators which were belts with metal cups, to take the various stocks to the
top floor where plan sifters containing stacks of silken sieves swung around in
circles. The various results were then dropped down to the third floor where
purifiers submitted them to a different kind of sieving where draughts of air
took out any tiny flecks of bran, before being dropped down to the appropriate
rollers: on; the first floor.
The greater portion of the opened wheat was flour, but it was mostly granular,
was called semolina and had to be taken up and down the mill to be ground by the
smooth rollers again and again until sifted into the finest flour, while what
was left was packed as pollard.
Once the processed wheat had been collected either as flour, bran and pollard it
was conveyed into the packing machines out in the upper floor of the store. As
there were often very large shipments of flour to all parts of the world and
particularly into Africa and the East, the store had to contain many hundreds of
tons of flour before being dropped down in slippery slides to the railway trucks
in the siding.
On the ground floor wheat in bulk or in bags was handled and basically cleaned
before being conveyed up to the various silos. As flour was sold to bakers in
150lb or 196lb sacks, the jute bags in which wheat was received from growers, an
elaborate cleaning process was necessary and there were always several men
engaged cleaning and mending jute bags on the ground floor.
It was about this time that the 4 bushell wheat bag, used for a 196lb bag of
flour when cleaned, was phased out. Staff were greatly pleased, as stacking
wheat or flour ten high was no mean feat.
In 1922 my father decided to market a self-raising flour, which he named
Jackett’s Red Seal Self-Raising flour, in 2lb-paper bags, with a big seal of
quality as the trade mark in the centre of the packet. Until the war had ended,
baking powder had been the usual means of home baking. The new brand was
launched at the Royal Easter Show where scones baked in the stand were free and
really appreciated by throngs of people and the tasters were sent on their way
with a free show bag containing sample bags of self-raising flour and little
nick-nacks to intrigue children as well as their mothers who also scored recipe
books.
The mill obviously had to be extended and a three-storey brick building was
built out from the front of the flour mill and across the Beresford Road
entrance to the engine room and water-cooler. The ground floor of this new
building accommodated the office which had been a small extension to the main
building, while the mixing of flour and cream of tartar took place on the top
(third floor) and packaging took place on the floor below. In those days there
was no automatic packaging, this being done by about eight or nine girls. Also
on this floor (over the roadway) the packets of self-raising flour were packed
in cartons, and a slide opening in the floor enabled the cartons to be loaded on
to lorries.
For some years after the Great War most deliveries of goods were carried by
horse-drawn lorries, as motor vehicles of all kinds had to be imported and were
in short supply. My father had brought his Humber motor car from Adelaide by
boat as no one in their right mind tried to drive from Adelaide to Sydney on
what were called roads. As it was a pre-war model and out of fashion, my father
had the body changed to a lorry with Red Seal signs all over it and this
delivered the product for quite a few years to all the groceries and corner
shops in Sydney.
Two other companies started making self-raising flour at about the same time and
competition was very keen. These were Aeroplane (of Jelly fame too) and Sydney
SR Flour. Groceries had not become supermarkets and corner shops were
everywhere. Self-raising flour took on quickly and baking powder almost went out
of business. Jackett’s Red Seal built up a strong following and lasted until
well into the thirties.
In the flour mill itself additions were made from time as new machinery became
available to increase output and by about 1925 the steam engine was unable to
provide all the power needed in the mill and self-raising flour area. The
milling process is easily upset by any variation in the speed of the rollers and
sifters and the steam engine was beginning to falter every now and again.
Electric motors of any large horsepower size were being developed but it was
nearly another year before one was bought and installed, It was supplied with
electricity at 110 volts, instead of the normal 240 volts and for quite a while
in switching over generators in the power stations there was a sudden break
which affected the milling process. The whole mill had to be started up again
and the flour in the system and packers put through again. They were worrying
times for the miller and it was a long time before the power station people were
able to avoid the ten or fifteen second break.
Australian flour mills were capable of producing much more flour than could be
used by bakers and pastry cooks and other users in Australia, so that milling
capacity was dependent on export to the rest of the world. As the milling
process was essentially a continuous one, three shifts from eleven pm Sundays to
eleven am Saturdays was the usual practice. Starting and stopping a mill is
time-consuming and expensive, so whatever a miller’s normal sales to bakers, he
depended on getting export sales to keep the mill running in three shifts.
Therefore the mill was nearly always well lit-up all night summer and winter,
and the extensive galvanised iron store’s top floor was filled almost to
over-flowing with hundreds of tons of export flour awaiting shipment. Most
export orders were packed in 49lb calico bags, and when delivery was made, down
the slides went the 49lb calico bags of flour to the open railway wagons and
onto the ships in the harbour. Within a day or two the store would be just about
empty.
It will be seen from this that buying wheat was a crucial part of taking orders
for export, particularly when thousands of tons of flour were often involved,
and the daily fluctuations in the price of wheat were an important factor in
trading in flour. Indeed the wheat in the silos sometimes had to be stored for
months to ensure satisfactory trading especially when export markets throughout
the world were often most volatile. The first floor store carried enormous
weights of export flour awaiting shipments, stacks up to ten to twelve feet high
testing the great two by two feet wooden bearers with which the store was built.
Flour milling did not escape the depression which came in October 1929. People
in Sydney did not use as much bread and export orders also dropped off seriously
as the depression was a world-wide disaster. The flour millers of New South
Wales, as every other manufacturing business, found orders hard to get and their
mills during the nineteen-thirties were more often than not, down to working one
shift. This of course was more expensive and as the depression did not really
disappear entirely until the outbreak of war, some milling companies folded.
In South Australia Jackett Bros very early fared badly and in 1931 the head
office was moved to Strathfield, but both Sydney and Adelaide had difficulty in
trading under the conditions of the depression. The mills in Adelaide and Sydney
were sold. In 1937 the Strathfield mill was sold to a consortium of three of
Sydney’s larger milling companies, who promptly closed it down under a scheme
developed by the association of NSW millers.
In due course as conditions improved with the war, the Strathfield mill became
part of Allied Mills and was renamed William Farrer & Co. Ltd, after the great
Wheat breeder who improved Australian varieties of wheat and helped to eradicate
the scourge of rust on our best milling wheats.
Allied Mills became part of Goodman Fielder in the eighties, and as the whole
process of milling had again gone through dynamic change, the Strathfield mill
as so many others, became obsolete. It was closed down about five years ago and
demolished. A great Strathfield landmark just failed to reach its century.
It must arouse some surprise that at the bottom of Beresford Road is the only
sign of industrial development in original Strathfield. It is interesting that a
very large industrial building such as the flour mill was located next door to
one of the municipality’s many substantial mansions. It would seem that when the
mill was built, places such as flour mills needed railway sidings and this was
where one could be fitted in. On the opposite side of Beresford Road there was a
grain merchant who had a railway facility too. In between the wars this was
Stockman’s Horse drawn wagons and gradually more and more motor lorries came for
produce of one kind and another for fare and chicken runs where suburbs such as
Lakemba and Punchbowl and beyond now stands
At the end of the first war there were vacant blocks of land in all Strathfield
streets south of Redmyre Road, while there was only Pott’s Bush west of Chalmers
Road, an area beloved of two-Sup players, and a dairy until after Word War II.
Actually the flour mill was not a noisy neighbour, even when it was driven by a
high-powered steam engine, and apart from being lit inside scarcely noticeable
at night. Probably the noisiest part was the nightly shunting of trucks in and
out of the rail yard.
The main brick building had
obviously been built for the foller milling process. It worked in this way.
Wheat drawn from the various silos in accordance with the miller’s choice of
varieties was then moistened carefully to facilitate its progress through the
mill. On the first floor were banks of steel rollers, the first four sets
grooved, the remainder smooth.
The rollers were pressed against each other, the first four grooved ones taking
the wheat and cutting it open and scraping all the flour, and flour in the form
of semolina, from the skin of the wheat. From the roller floor wooden pipes led
from the various rollers to elevators which were belts with metal cups, to take
the various stocks to the top floor where plan sifters containing stacks of
silken sieves swung around in circles. The various results were then dropped
down to the third floor where purifiers submitted them to a different kind of
sieving where draughts of air took out any tiny flecks of bran, before being
dropped down to the appropriate rollers on the first floor.
A greater portion of the opened wheat was flour but it was mostly granular, was
called semolina and had to be taken up and down the mill to be ground by the
smooth rollers again and again until sifted into the finest flour, while what
was left was packed as pollard.
Once the processed wheat had been collected either as flour, bran or pollard, it
was conveyed into the packing machines out in the upper floor of the store. As
there were often very large shipments of flour to all parts of the world and
particularly into Africa and the East, the store had to contain many hundreds of
tons of flour before being dropped down in slippery slides to the railway trucks
in the siding.
On the ground floor wheat in bulk or in bags was handled and basically cleaned
before being conveyed up to the various silos. As flour was sold to bakers in
150lb or 196lb sacks, the jute bags in which wheat was received from growers, an
elaborate cleaning process was necessary, and there were always several men
engaged cleaning and mending jute bags on the ground floor.
It was about this time that the 4 bushel wheat bag, used for a l96lb bag of
flour when cleaned, was phased out. Staff were greatly pleased, as stacking
wheat or flour ten high was no mean feat.
In 1922 my father decided to market a self-raising flour, which he named
Jackett’s Red Seal Self-Raising flour, in 2lb paper bags, with a big seal of
quality as the trade mark in the centre of the packet. Until the war had ended,
baking powder had been the usual means of home baking. The new brand was
launched at the Royal Easter Show where scones baked in the stand were free and
really appreciated by throngs of people, and the tasters were sent on their way
with a free bag containing sample bags of self-raising flour and little
knick-knacks to intrigue children as well as mothers who also scored recipe
books.
The mill obviously had to be extended and a three-storey brick building was
built out from the front of the flour mill and across the Beresford Rd. entrance
to the engine room and water-cooler. The ground floor of this new building
accommodated the office which had been a small extension to the main building,
while the mixing of flour and cream of tartar took place on the top (third
floor) and packaging took place on the floor below. In those days there was no
automatic packaging, this being done by about eight or nine girls. Also on this
floor (over the roadway) the packets of self- raising flour were packed in
cartons, and a slide opening in the floor enabled the cartons to be loaded on to
lorries.
For some years after the Great War most deliveries of goods were carried by
horse-drawn lorries as motor vehicles of all kinds had to be imported and were
in short supply. My father had brought his Humber motor car from Adelaide by
boat as no one in their right mind tried to drive from Adelaide to Sydney on
what were called roads. As it was a prewar model and out of fashion my father
had the body changed to a lorry with Red Seal signs all over it, and this
delivered the product for quite a few years to all the groceries and corner
shops in Sydney.
Two other companies started making self-raising flour at about the same time and
competition was very keen. These were Aeroplane (of Jelly fame) and Sydney SR
Flour. Groceries had not become super markets and corner shops were everywhere.
Self-raising flour took on quickly and baking powder almost went out of
business. Jackett’s Red Seal built up a strong following and lasted until well
into the thirties.
In the flour mill itself additions were made from time to time as new machinery
became available to increase output, and by about 1925 the steam engine was
unable to provide all the power needed in the mill and self- raising flour area.
The milling process is easily upset by any variation in the speed of the rollers
and sifters and the steam engine was beginning to falter every now and again.
Electric motors of any large horsepower size were being developed but it was
nearly another year before one was bought and installed. It was supplied with
electricity at 110 volts instead of the normal 240 volts and for quite a while
in switching over generators in the power stations there was a sudden break
which affected the milling process. The whole mill had to be started up again
and the flour in the system and packets put through again. They were worrying
times for the miller and it was a long time before the power station people were
able to avoid the ten or fifteen second break.
The late Mr Gordon Jackett,
former State Member for Electorate of Burwood, provided this information to the Strathfield
District Historical Society and formed part of the October 1986 Newsletter.
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