Country Towns
Flour Mill, Bathurst, NSW, 1906
This mill was one of several in Bathurst (47 km east of Orange) and Francis Crago, who already had a mill there, had contemplated a new one for some time. To this end he engaged Henry Simon Ltd of Manchester and Sydney to design it for him on a new site adjacent to the railway. It was built by John Dunkley in 1906 to produce Crago’s own brand of flour known as “Snowdrift”. Unfortunately, Crago died in 1907.
When it opened the mill occupied ¾ of an acre (0.3 ha), with its own railway branch line, allowing seventeen railway trucks to be loaded and unloaded at the same time. Underneath the three-storey mill was a commodious basement, plus other incidental buildings constructed on the site. It was a 15-sack mill, i.e. one capable of producing fifteen 200 lb (90.72 kg) bags of flour/hour, and had a silo storage capacity of 12,000 bags of wheat, while two large wheat sheds could store 30,000 and 15,000 bags, respectively, giving a total of 57,000 bags.
Motive power for the mill was provided by a steam engine made by Ruston, Proctor & Co. Ltd of Lincoln, England, with an output of 150 h.p.and turning a flywheel of 4½ tons (4.57 t). Simon’s latest roller mills were used, known as the “Reform” type, being the first of their type to be used in the Commonwealth. The latest improved scalping and dressing machinery was installed, new purifiers of the latest design were used, plus “Niagara” dust collectors to keep the mill free from dust.
Lighting was by electricity (quite modern for the time) and a 20,000 gal. (90,920 L) underground water tank fed the American Babcock and Wilcox boiler. The smoke stack originally rose to 101 ft 6 in. (30.94 m) in height with an inside diameter tapering to 3 ft 4 in. (1.02 m) at the top. The old mill owned by F. Crago & Sons Ltd eventually closed in 1954, due to poor wheat quality and freight costs, and was sold and reused.
Reference: Phillip Simpson, “Historical Guide to New South Wales”, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2020.
Flour Mill, Bathurst, NSW, 1906
This mill was one of several in Bathurst (47 km east of Orange) and Francis Crago, who already had a mill there, had contemplated a new one for some time. To this end he engaged Henry Simon Ltd of Manchester and Sydney to design it for him on a new site adjacent to the railway. It was built by John Dunkley in 1906 to produce Crago’s own brand of flour known as “Snowdrift”. Unfortunately, Crago died in 1907.
When it opened the mill occupied ¾ of an acre (0.3 ha), with its own railway branch line, allowing seventeen railway trucks to be loaded and unloaded at the same time. Underneath the three-storey mill was a commodious basement, plus other incidental buildings constructed on the site. It was a 15-sack mill, i.e. one capable of producing fifteen 200 lb (90.72 kg) bags of flour/hour, and had a silo storage capacity of 12,000 bags of wheat, while two large wheat sheds could store 30,000 and 15,000 bags, respectively, giving a total of 57,000 bags.
Motive power for the mill was provided by a steam engine made by Ruston, Proctor & Co. Ltd of Lincoln, England, with an output of 150 h.p.and turning a flywheel of 4½ tons (4.57 t). Simon’s latest roller mills were used, known as the “Reform” type, being the first of their type to be used in the Commonwealth. The latest improved scalping and dressing machinery was installed, new purifiers of the latest design were used, plus “Niagara” dust collectors to keep the mill free from dust.
Lighting was by electricity (quite modern for the time) and a 20,000 gal. (90,920 L) underground water tank fed the American Babcock and Wilcox boiler. The smoke stack originally rose to 101 ft 6 in. (30.94 m) in height with an inside diameter tapering to 3 ft 4 in. (1.02 m) at the top. The old mill owned by F. Crago & Sons Ltd eventually closed in 1954, due to poor wheat quality and freight costs, and was sold and reused.
Reference: Phillip Simpson, “Historical Guide to New South Wales”, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2020.