Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd Factory is a heritage-listed former factory at 6 Short Street, Gladstone, Gladstone Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1929 to 1949. It is also known as PCD Factory and Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Company Ltd Factory. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 30 March 2001.
History The Port Curtis Dairy Company Ltd (the PCD) was formed at Gladstone in 1904, with its first timber factory buildings erected at Gladstone in 1906. By the 1920s, the PCD was one of the largest co-operative dairy companies in Queensland. The activities of the PCD at Gladstone and in surrounding districts stimulated the expansion of commercial dairying in Central Queensland. Statewide, dairying was an important economic activity for the first half of the 20th century, and a mainstay for farming communities during the economic depression of the early 1930s. Surviving elements of the Gladstone factory site include the 1929–1930 factory building, an early factory office building, several cold stores, a single-storeyed office building with two- storeyed extensions erected 1948–1950, a 1938 re-tinning shed, an ice shed and store room erected during the Second World War, and sections of a 1914 railway siding and 1923 siding extension.
From the late 1880s, the Queensland government promoted the establishment of dairying in Queensland as a commercial, rather than subsistence, activity. The development of dairying as a staple industry was considered a means of relieving selector poverty and debt, and as encouragement to closer settlement of the land. The Meat and Dairy Produce Act 1893 was introduced to offer subsidies to dairy farmers and a tax on cattle, the latter funding the establishment of creameries, cheese and butter factories throughout Queensland. In 1895, Queensland produced its first butter surplus.
The real catalyst for the establishment of commercial dairying proved to be the Agricultural Lands Purchase Act 1894, under which valuable agricultural land long freeholded by pastoralists was repurchased by the government, then offered as selections (mostly on perpetual lease) to agriculturalists. By the late 19th century, pastoralists could no longer afford to maintain huge freeholds, and were keen to relinquish land through repurchase. In the Gladstone district, the 1894 Act led to the opening of the Boyne Valley to selection and closer settlement, and this, combined with the provisions of the Meat and Dairy Produce Act 1893, ultimately led to the establishment of a meatworks (1896) and a butter factory (1906) at Gladstone. The Closer Settlement Act 1906 with its provisions for repurchase and on-selling to agriculturalists as settlement farm leases, led to a dairying boom in the Mount Larcom and Yarwun districts behind Gladstone. The Queensland government further supported agriculturalists with its establishment in 1901 of the Queensland Agricultural Bank, aimed at increasing the flow of credit to selectors, further stimulating the dairying industry.
The Queensland Government also intervened to maintain and enhance standards within the dairying industry. In 1898 the government introduced compulsory grading of butter and cream, prohibiting the mixing of all states of cream (fresh, ripe and stale) in the same vat. The Dairy Produce Acts 1904–05 provided further quality control with the introduction of Government inspection of dairies and factories. In addition, Queensland's Margarine Act 1910 restricting the use of margarine, was aimed at protecting the local dairying industry.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of the early Queensland dairy industry was its organisation along co-operative lines. The co-operative movement, established in Switzerland in the 1880s, gained worldwide popularity at the Second International Dairy Conference held in 1905, but Queensland farmers were experimenting with the concept from the 1890s. In the 1890s and early 1900s, Victorian "dairy immigrants" also brought ideas about co-operatives to Queensland.
In November 1903, a public meeting was held at the Gladstone Town Hall to gauge local interest in forming a co-operative dairy company and erecting a dairy factory at Gladstone. Supported by graziers and selectors alike, a provisional committee was elected, representing Mount Larcombe, Calliope, Clyde Creek, Boyne River, Gladstone, Bororen, and Miriam Vale. The committee canvassed the district for support, soliciting shares and guarantees of milk supplies. As a result, the Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Company Ltd was registered in Brisbane in September 1904 as a joint stock company, with the registered office situated in Gladstone. The company's objective was to erect a factory at Gladstone for the manufacture and storage of butter and other dairy products. During 1904 articles of association were drawn up, and a founding committee comprising prominent local graziers and businessmen was elected. A site for the dairy factory was selected adjacent to the railway line, a couple of blocks southeast of the main Gladstone railway station, and the scheme was approved by the Meat and Dairy Board. Tenders for the construction of a dairy factory (a timber structure) at Gladstone were called in June 1905 by Bundaberg architect Frederic Herbert Faircloth, with the contract let in August to J Connors. A dispute between the contractor and the dairy company delayed completion for several months, but finally the factory commenced butter production in April 1906. In 1914, Queensland Railways constructed a dead end siding for the PCD, which was extended in .
The establishment of the butter factory at Gladstone provided local farmers with a steady income and stimulated the town economy. For example, the Queensland National Bank opened a branch at Gladstone in December 1905, and the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney erected substantial new premises in the town in 1910–11 (Kullaroo House).
During the 1910s dairying expanded in the surrounding districts, particularly at Mount Larcom and Bracewell, and the PCD made steady progress. Following the appointment in January 1916 of Joseph W Rigby as Manager and Secretary, the area from which the Company received cream was extended and the Company's growth was greatly accelerated. In the period 1916 to 1923, suppliers increased from 216 to 502 and manufactured butter from . Historian Lorna Macdonald (1988:170) suggests that during the 1920s the combination of Wilson (JL, of Calliope Station) as chairman, Rigby as manager, and RM Hill of Bororen who was elected to the board in 1924 made the PCD one of the largest co-operative organisations in Queensland. JW Rigby remained as manager until November 1931.
By the mid-1920s, the Company was expanding at a substantial rate. Under the provisions of the Primary Producers' Co-operative Associations Act 1923, in order to continue to use the word "co-operative", the Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Company Ltd was de-registered under the Companies Act 1863 to 1913, and in February 1925 was re-registered under the 1923 Act as the Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd. In the same year the PCD erected its own cold stores at Gladstone, with storage capacity for of butter. This obviated the heavy costs of railage to Brisbane, as well as Brisbane cold storage charges, and reduced loss in quality during transit to Brisbane. As a consequence, a higher grade of export butter, and direct overseas shipment of butter from Gladstone, were made possible. The installation of coldstores at the PCD's Gladstone factory had important long-term effects for the Port of Gladstone, where butter formed the staple export from 1926 to 1934, prior to the first chilled beef (distinct from frozen beef) being exported in 1935.
From the mid-1920s the PCD led the way in consolidating the dairying industry in central Queensland, from just south of Bundaberg to Bowen in the north, and inland to Monto, Biloela and Wowan. Consolidation commenced in July 1927 when the recently established Central Queensland Dairy Co-operative Ltd, based at Rockhampton, (and which had already absorbed Mount Larcom & District Co-operative Dairy & Produce Co., established 1921), amalgamated with the Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd. The amalgamation was conditional on the PCD erecting a dairy factory at Rockhampton, which commenced operation in January 1928.
Further negotiations resulted in the absorption of the Bundaberg Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd, whose factory at Bundaberg operated as a branch of the Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd from 1 March 1928. From 1 April 1928 the Dawson Valley Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd's factory at Wowan operated as a branch of the PCD.
Following the opening of the Upper Burnett River to closer settlement in the 1920s, the PCD established a butter factory at Monto in 1929, stimulating a phenomenal expansion of dairying and pig-raising in that district. In the same year the PCD installed a buttermilk drying plant at Gladstone, the powdered buttermilk sold back to dairy farmers for fowl, pig and calf rearing. This proved a popular side-line, and in 1933 the PCD installed a plant at Gladstone for converting buttermilk into a buttermilk curd.
The PCD closed its Gladstone factory on 1 July 1929 for re-building purposes, re-opening early in February 1930 to handle cream only, and was fully operational by September 1930. The 1905–06 building appears to have been demolished at this time, replaced with the present main factory building. The 1929–30 factory contained the PCD's first laboratory.
In addition to the substantial re-building of its Gladstone factory, the PCD opened a new factory in Mackay in March 1930, following the absorption of the Mackay District Co-operative Butter Factory Association Ltd by the PCD in 1929–30.
Dairying proved to be the economic mainstay of many Queensland farming communities, including those of central Queensland, during the depression years of the early 1930s. Pig and calf raising became important adjuncts to the dairying industry, utilising skim milk and later buttermilk from the factories, as stock feed. By the second half of 1934, the increased quantity of butter available for export necessitated the construction of additional cold stores at Gladstone, on land leased from Queensland Railways adjacent to the PCD factory. These commenced operation in January 1935. (This building was demolished s.)
The PCD continued to expand its activities in central Queensland in the second half of the 1930s. In 1937 a dairy factory and buttermilk stud stock piggery (carrying capacity 500 pigs) were opened at Biloela in the Callide Valley. Another PCD buttermilk stud stock piggery, with a carrying capacity of 700 pigs, was opened at Monto in February 1938. In November 1938 the PCD installed a plant at the Gladstone factory for the re-tinning of cream cans, which proved popular with farmers.
PCD butter production peaked in 1938–1939 with . About 1938 a single-storeyed administrative building was erected south of the main factory building, and in May 1939 a contract was let to J Hutchinson for additional cold stores, capable of storing 40,000 boxes of butter, at the PCD's Gladstone factory. These were operational by October 1940, giving the factory a holding capacity of 65,000 boxes of butter.