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Built in the 1850s along the banks of the Galien River in New Troy, Michigan, this flour mill--originally known as the Morley Mill after its founders, Thomas and Ambrose Morley--remained in operation until 1989.
The tallest buildings are located at Hegreneset (shoreline) and Hatleberg. In the lower part of the picture at the mill plant, a larger development of new housing is planned. The silo building and more will be preserved.
Mansfield Mill located in the southeastern corner of Parke County Indiana on the Big Raccoon Creek. At one time State Road 59 wound its way through Mansfield, Parke County, Indiana and crossed the Mansfield Covered Bridge. The original roller mill was built in 1819 by James Kelsey and Francis Dickson.
Today, Parke County, Indiana is billed to tourists as the “Covered Bridge Capital” of the world.
nrhp # 83002255- Mascot Roller Mills, also known as Ressler's Mill, is a historic grist mill complex located at Upper Leacock Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The complex consists of the mill, miller's house, summer kitchen, and frame barn. The original section of the mill was built in 1737. The machinery was installed in 1906. It is a three-story, "L"-shaped stone building with a gable roof and cupola. The house was built in 1855, and is a two-story, gable roofed brick banked building. The summer kitchen is adjacent to the house is a one-story, brick structure. The small frame barn dates to the late-19th century. It is the oldest continuously operating grist mill in Lancaster County.[2]
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
from Wikipedia
West central Indiana is home to many covered bridges and two large watermills. A log structure was built as a mill on Big Racoon Creek at this site in 1820. The current mill was powered by a 30 plus foot waterwheel. Water turbines replaced the wheel. Owned by the state of Indiana, it is opened four weekends a year. During Covered Bridge Day approximately 2,500 vendors work the area. Photos of the crowds are incredible. This is a very rural part of western Indiana.
nrhp # 83002255- Mascot Roller Mills, also known as Ressler's Mill, is a historic grist mill complex located at Upper Leacock Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The complex consists of the mill, miller's house, summer kitchen, and frame barn. The original section of the mill was built in 1737. The machinery was installed in 1906. It is a three-story, "L"-shaped stone building with a gable roof and cupola. The house was built in 1855, and is a two-story, gable roofed brick banked building. The summer kitchen is adjacent to the house is a one-story, brick structure. The small frame barn dates to the late-19th century. It is the oldest continuously operating grist mill in Lancaster County.[2]
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
from Wikipedia
Southside Roller Mill in Chase City, Virginia started operations in 1912. The company produced and sold flour under the Wide-Awake Flour trade name, and corn meal under the Hoe-Cake Corn Meal trade name. The mill was in operation until 1981. In 2016, when the photograph was taken, all of the milling equipment including millstones, chutes, sifters, presses, and engines remained in the building. The mill is a rare example of an early-twentieth century roller mill.
In front of the building the owner had a sign that stated, "Coming Summer 2017 Historic Roller Mill Tours." Based on the exterior appearance of the building in late 2016, that was an ambitious goal.
This was taken from the back side of the Lehi Rolled Mill looking East toward Mount Timpanogos.
At the turn of the century, Lehi Roller Mills was among thousands of such family-owned mills operating in the United States. Fewer than fifty remain today. High demand keeps the mill grinding around the clock, six days a week, and the mill produces some 100,000 pounds of flour each day.
The Lehi Roller Mills was immortalized in the 1984 film Footloose. It was featured as Ren McCormack's (Kevin Bacon) workplace and as the site of the dance.
At the time the film was made, Lehi Roller Mills was surrounded by nothing but vacant fields. In one scene, the Reverend Shaw Moore (John Lithgow) and his wife Vi Moore (Dianne Wiest) keep a wary eye on the proceedings while standing in a field some distance away. The area is now home to a variety of fast food restaurants and a shopping center. (Credit Wikipedia)
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Robert's Mill AKA Hamm's Mill
Virginia Highlander Rd.
Sugar Grove
Smyth County, VA
This is a Roller Mill, Powered by Turbine that was built in 1918. It is non operational but has been restored by owner, Sena Roberts. Unfortunately, it is not open to the public. The turbine, dam, roller mills, stones and other machinery are in place. The mill is in good shape and the grounds are well maintained.
This one is also easy to find.
From SR-16 in Sugar Grove, VA, take CR 601/Teas Rd to Virginia Highlander Rd. on the right. The mill can be seen from there.
Information from SPOOM.
Also known as the Appel Mill,this mill was built in 1858 and operated till 1942 when closed due to WW II.It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
A circa 1890 Pratt Truss bridge is located next to the old mill.
The history of the mill,still privately owned can be found here:
Gulgong. Population 2,500.
This charming little town was depicted on the original Australian $10 note (from 1966 to 1993) but alas it is not on the new plastic notes. Which is a shame because Gulgong is a very historical town. Its history is well documented especially through a world important photographic collection. The photographers concerned were Henry Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss from Melbourne who photographed almost everything in the town in August 1872. 500 glass plate negatives of their photos have been bought together in the Holtermann Collection which is of international significance and it is housed in “The Greatest Wonder of the World”. This does not refer to the photographic collection but to this building which was a former American tobacco warehouse which adopted this name as an advertising stunt. It is called the Holtermann Collection because the negatives were purchased by Bernard Holtermann after Merlin’s death in 1873. Holtermann added the Gulgong photographs to his extensive collection. The collection is on a UNESCO register of heritage.
The white history of Gulgong goes back to 1821 when William Lawson (the explorer who crossed the Blue Mts in 1813 fame) explored the district. Richard Rouse a squatters moved into the region in 1822 and he and others eventually obtained licenses to legally occupy runs. In 1825 Rouse got a grant of 4,000 acres. When Major Thomas Mitchell came through here in 1831 he named the district Gulgong using an Aboriginal word meaning “deep waterhole”. Although a little gold was discovered in 1866 the district was transformed in 1870 when a major gold lode was discovered and within six weeks 500 people were on the site. The town of Gulgong was surveyed in 1870 and when gazetted in 1872 there was an estimated 20,000 people on the goldfields. 15,000 kilos of gold was extracted from the gold mines over the next decade. Much of the town however dates from the early 1870s and the first developments were around the intersection of Mayne and Hebert streets. Among the early settlers was the family of Henry Lawson and Rolfe Boldrewood the local police man who wrote Robbery Under Arms in 1882. Lawson in 1904 wrote a poem about the gold rush at Gulgong saying
Paid in laughter, tears and nuggets in the play that fortune plays —
'Tis the palmy days of Gulgong — Gulgong in the Roaring Days.
Like all mining towns Gulgong soon had hotels, banks, stores and entertainment venues like the Prince William Opera house. Solid stone and weatherboard houses came soon after. When the gold ran out the businessmen stayed on to service the farming area around the town. The bark hut of the 1871 Union church was replaced with brick and stone churches- The Anglican built theirs in 1876 to a design of architect Edmund Blacket and the Catholics built their first church in 1885 and the Presbyterians replaced their wooden church with a stone church in 1909 and the Methodists built a church in 1871 and replaced it around 1905. The first Town hall was built in 1892, the Courthouse in 1898 etc. A railway reached Gulgong in 1909. After the mining became big business requiring companies and shafts the government opened 24,000 acres around the town up for farming in 1876. Wheat became a major product as well as wool. A flour mill was built near the town and a new large mill in 1894. Once the railway arrived another new flourmill was erected with silos.
The town has more than 130 heritage listed buildings.
Bendigo.
Bendigo is figuratively and literally the city built on gold. Beneath the modern city is a maze of tunnels and shafts from one of the world’s richest gold finds. Bendigo meant gold. Thirty seven separate quartz reefs lie beneath the city and gold was found in them all. After the first alluvial gold was found in late 1851 diggers started to flock to the goldfields. The wives of two workers on the 200,000 acre Ravenswood sheep run are credited with finding the first alluvial gold on the sheep station but many others have also claimed this distinction. Within weeks there were signs of this gold rush becoming another California type gold rush with hopeful diggers pouring into the gold region from China, Italy, Germany, other parts of the British Empire and the other Australian colonies. The Victorian gold rushes transformed all of the Australian colonies. By mid 1852 there were 20,000 people on the Bendigo mine fields and this later swelled to 40,000 people in the Bendigo region. This figures included around 5,000 to 8,000 Chinese diggers and gold camp followers and businessmen. The names of some of the mines were taken from the gullies and regions of Bendigo and they are now suburbs of Bendigo - Kangaroo Flat, Eaglehawk, Golden Square, Long Gully, California Gully, Ironbark, etc. Gold mining might have begun on Bendigo Creek where the Gold Commissioners, who checked the miners’ licenses and where the police and courts were set up, but mining soon spread through the Bendigo district. Camp Hill overlooking Bendigo Creek and Rosalind Park became the government centre from where police and control was exercised. The old Bendigo Gaol (1859) is still up on the hill there next to the Camp Hill state school (1877). The old government Survey Office was also built here in 1858 at the top of View Street on Camp Hill and the Police Barracks were constructed at the bottom of the hill in 1859.
Bendigo was the world’s richest and biggest gold field until the discovery of the Kalgoorlie goldfields in Western Australian in the early 1890s. It was the largest and most successful goldfield in eastern Australia. Between 1851 and 1954 when the Central Deborah Gold Mine closed in Bendigo some 700,000 kilograms of gold was extracted from the Bendigo region. The value of its gold in current terms would be about $30 billion. The goldfield covered an area roughly 30 kilometres long and 12 kilometres wide. There were thousands of diggers who sought alluvial gold- and found it- in the 1850s before they were replaced by small and large companies who sank deep shafts and dug tunnels to extract the gold from the quartz reefs in the 1860s and later. There were more than 5,000 registered gold mines in Bendigo. This led to Bendigo having its own Stock Exchange so that gold shares could be sold to investors in London and around the world through the marvel of the telegraph. Bendigo had one of the few regional stock exchanges in Australia until it was closed in 2012. At least 140 mine shafts were sunk in Bendigo and some of them reached depths of 1,000 metres or more! Some of the poppet heads for these shafts still remain in Bendigo. One of the last mines to be formed was the Central Deborah Mining Company in 1939 and it was the last to operate. It only closed in 1954. Some of the most famous and successful of the Bendigo mining companies were: Shamrock, New Chum Hill, Lansell’s 222, Victoria Hill, etc. Since the closure of the Central Deborah Mine in 1954 new mining techniques have been used in the 1980s and 1990s to try and extract yet more gold from the old mine shafts and workings. Clearly all the heritage and history of Bendigo is clearly rooted in its gold mining past. Probably no other Town Hall in Australia has 22 carat gold leaf embellishments across the ceiling. The original Town Hall was a simple two storey structure designed by the Town Clerk in 1859. A structure more befitting a wealthy gold mining city was later required and local architect William Vahland was commissioned to transform the Town Hall into a grand structure which he did. His new Town Hall was built between 1878 and 1886 with ornate plaster mouldings on both the interior and exterior and although Vahland’s plan included a clock tower the clock was never installed in the Town Hall tower. It is still one of the grand buildings of Bendigo.
The town of Bendigo did not exist in formal terms until 1890 when a local committee was given the task of trying to decide who actually found the first gold and to decide upon a name for the city. Although the government town was known as Sandhurst, locally the town was always referred to as Bendigo. The committee asked local ratepayers and decided upon Bendigo for the city name in 1891 but they never decided unequivocally who found the first gold there. But they did acknowledged that the claim of Mrs Margaret Kennedy of the Ravenswood Run was probably the best claim. The origins for Bendigo City go back to 1853 when land was surveyed and the city plan drawn up. Pall Mall near Bendigo Creek became the centre for commercial activity and it remains a main thoroughfare. It became a municipality in 1863 and its prosperity ushered in a period of grand building which continued into the 1870s and 1880s. The arrival for the railway from Melbourne in 1862 aided the town greatly in terms of industry and communications for it could now send it products to the markets in Melbourne. By the early 1860s Bendigo had a flourishing industry base with flour mills, woollen mills, tanneries, quarries, foundries, a eucalyptus oil distillery and food production. The open eucalyptus woodland of this area just north of the Great Dividing Range was also felled and timber-cutting and saw milling was another important industry for the town.
Many of the architectural grand buildings of early Bendigo were created from the architectural studio of William Charles (Carl Wilhelm) Vahland and his associates. Vahland was born in Hanover in Germany in 1828. In 1849 he entered the most prestigious building school in Germany to learn the art of architecture. His theory and practical studies began at 6 am and finished at 9:30 pm except for the earlier finish at 7 pm on Saturdays. He studied architecture there for three years and learnt in great depth about Greek classical styles of architecture. His interests in this area influenced his architecture for the rest of his life. In 1852 after completing his studies he practised architect in Bremen and Hamburg before he sailed for the Victorian goldfields in 1854. He travelled immediately to Bendigo but had little success on the goldfields. By 1855 he was employed as carpenter before he became a naturalised British subject in 1857 which was also the year in which he established his own carpentry workshop making puddling cradles for miners. He ran his workshop and later architectural practice with his business partner Robert Getzschmann, with whom he worked until Getzschmann's death in 1875. Within a year or so of 1857 they were both working as architects but Vahland also was founding member of the Bendigo Building Society which later became the Bendigo Bank and he was a Justice of the Peace and he was active in local affairs. He married an English woman in 1859 and built his own residence in Barkley Terrace. Vahland went on to become the preeminent architect of Bendigo. He designed around 80 public structures for the city including a number of its best known buildings. He is known to have designed around 200 public and commercial buildings in the goldfields area of Central Victoria. He probably also designed dozens of large and small residences that have not been ascribed to his studio. He worked for over 50 years creating much of the visual landscape and the city. He died in 1915 after World War One broke out when sadly a few members of his beloved Masonic Lodge (he had been a member since 1857 and had been the Grand Master) tried to have him expelled because of his Germanic background!
Some of the notable Bendigo buildings designed by William Vahland are: the Alexandria Fountain in Pall Mall 1881; the City Family Hotel 1872; the Commercial Bank of Australia 1875; the original Post Office 1870; the Bendigo Art Gallery 1873 which was originally the Masonic Hall and Temple; the original Art Gallery 1867; the Temperance Hall 1860; the Sandhurst Club Building 1893; the Colonial Bank 1887; the original Shamrock Hotel 1860; the Town Hall 1878; the School of Mines 1864, 1878, 1887 and 1889; St Kilian’s Catholic Church 1888; St Paul’s Anglican Rectory 1885; All Saints Catholic Cathedral 1869; the Wesleyan Methodist church additions 1877; the Congregational Church 1890; the Lutheran Church 1857; the Convent of Mercy 1865; the Goldfields Hospital 1858, 1864 and 1866; the Bendigo Benevolent Asylum 1862, 1864 and 1872 etc. In addition to these significant structures in central Bendigo he designed churches and other public buildings in the outlying areas of Eaglehawk, Long Gully, Ironbark, California Gully, Kangaroo Flat etc.
no.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A6ggernes_valsem%C3%B8lle + no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegreneset (both in Norwegian). The oldest building is from 1760. Around the roller mill buildings, a new large development of apartment blocks is now planned, but the old and newer industrial buildings are to be preserved.
www.flickr.com/photos/145137719@N06/49919550398/in/album-...
www.flickr.com/photos/145137719@N06/50285465151/in/album-...
Bendigo.
Bendigo is figuratively and literally the city built on gold. Beneath the modern city is a maze of tunnels and shafts from one of the world’s richest gold finds. Bendigo meant gold. Thirty seven separate quartz reefs lie beneath the city and gold was found in them all. After the first alluvial gold was found in late 1851 diggers started to flock to the goldfields. The wives of two workers on the 200,000 acre Ravenswood sheep run are credited with finding the first alluvial gold on the sheep station but many others have also claimed this distinction. Within weeks there were signs of this gold rush becoming another California type gold rush with hopeful diggers pouring into the gold region from China, Italy, Germany, other parts of the British Empire and the other Australian colonies. The Victorian gold rushes transformed all of the Australian colonies. By mid 1852 there were 20,000 people on the Bendigo mine fields and this later swelled to 40,000 people in the Bendigo region. This figures included around 5,000 to 8,000 Chinese diggers and gold camp followers and businessmen. The names of some of the mines were taken from the gullies and regions of Bendigo and they are now suburbs of Bendigo - Kangaroo Flat, Eaglehawk, Golden Square, Long Gully, California Gully, Ironbark, etc. Gold mining might have begun on Bendigo Creek where the Gold Commissioners, who checked the miners’ licenses and where the police and courts were set up, but mining soon spread through the Bendigo district. Camp Hill overlooking Bendigo Creek and Rosalind Park became the government centre from where police and control was exercised. The old Bendigo Gaol (1859) is still up on the hill there next to the Camp Hill state school (1877). The old government Survey Office was also built here in 1858 at the top of View Street on Camp Hill and the Police Barracks were constructed at the bottom of the hill in 1859.
Bendigo was the world’s richest and biggest gold field until the discovery of the Kalgoorlie goldfields in Western Australian in the early 1890s. It was the largest and most successful goldfield in eastern Australia. Between 1851 and 1954 when the Central Deborah Gold Mine closed in Bendigo some 700,000 kilograms of gold was extracted from the Bendigo region. The value of its gold in current terms would be about $30 billion. The goldfield covered an area roughly 30 kilometres long and 12 kilometres wide. There were thousands of diggers who sought alluvial gold- and found it- in the 1850s before they were replaced by small and large companies who sank deep shafts and dug tunnels to extract the gold from the quartz reefs in the 1860s and later. There were more than 5,000 registered gold mines in Bendigo. This led to Bendigo having its own Stock Exchange so that gold shares could be sold to investors in London and around the world through the marvel of the telegraph. Bendigo had one of the few regional stock exchanges in Australia until it was closed in 2012. At least 140 mine shafts were sunk in Bendigo and some of them reached depths of 1,000 metres or more! Some of the poppet heads for these shafts still remain in Bendigo. One of the last mines to be formed was the Central Deborah Mining Company in 1939 and it was the last to operate. It only closed in 1954. Some of the most famous and successful of the Bendigo mining companies were: Shamrock, New Chum Hill, Lansell’s 222, Victoria Hill, etc. Since the closure of the Central Deborah Mine in 1954 new mining techniques have been used in the 1980s and 1990s to try and extract yet more gold from the old mine shafts and workings. Clearly all the heritage and history of Bendigo is clearly rooted in its gold mining past. Probably no other Town Hall in Australia has 22 carat gold leaf embellishments across the ceiling. The original Town Hall was a simple two storey structure designed by the Town Clerk in 1859. A structure more befitting a wealthy gold mining city was later required and local architect William Vahland was commissioned to transform the Town Hall into a grand structure which he did. His new Town Hall was built between 1878 and 1886 with ornate plaster mouldings on both the interior and exterior and although Vahland’s plan included a clock tower the clock was never installed in the Town Hall tower. It is still one of the grand buildings of Bendigo.
The town of Bendigo did not exist in formal terms until 1890 when a local committee was given the task of trying to decide who actually found the first gold and to decide upon a name for the city. Although the government town was known as Sandhurst, locally the town was always referred to as Bendigo. The committee asked local ratepayers and decided upon Bendigo for the city name in 1891 but they never decided unequivocally who found the first gold there. But they did acknowledged that the claim of Mrs Margaret Kennedy of the Ravenswood Run was probably the best claim. The origins for Bendigo City go back to 1853 when land was surveyed and the city plan drawn up. Pall Mall near Bendigo Creek became the centre for commercial activity and it remains a main thoroughfare. It became a municipality in 1863 and its prosperity ushered in a period of grand building which continued into the 1870s and 1880s. The arrival for the railway from Melbourne in 1862 aided the town greatly in terms of industry and communications for it could now send it products to the markets in Melbourne. By the early 1860s Bendigo had a flourishing industry base with flour mills, woollen mills, tanneries, quarries, foundries, a eucalyptus oil distillery and food production. The open eucalyptus woodland of this area just north of the Great Dividing Range was also felled and timber-cutting and saw milling was another important industry for the town.
Many of the architectural grand buildings of early Bendigo were created from the architectural studio of William Charles (Carl Wilhelm) Vahland and his associates. Vahland was born in Hanover in Germany in 1828. In 1849 he entered the most prestigious building school in Germany to learn the art of architecture. His theory and practical studies began at 6 am and finished at 9:30 pm except for the earlier finish at 7 pm on Saturdays. He studied architecture there for three years and learnt in great depth about Greek classical styles of architecture. His interests in this area influenced his architecture for the rest of his life. In 1852 after completing his studies he practised architect in Bremen and Hamburg before he sailed for the Victorian goldfields in 1854. He travelled immediately to Bendigo but had little success on the goldfields. By 1855 he was employed as carpenter before he became a naturalised British subject in 1857 which was also the year in which he established his own carpentry workshop making puddling cradles for miners. He ran his workshop and later architectural practice with his business partner Robert Getzschmann, with whom he worked until Getzschmann's death in 1875. Within a year or so of 1857 they were both working as architects but Vahland also was founding member of the Bendigo Building Society which later became the Bendigo Bank and he was a Justice of the Peace and he was active in local affairs. He married an English woman in 1859 and built his own residence in Barkley Terrace. Vahland went on to become the preeminent architect of Bendigo. He designed around 80 public structures for the city including a number of its best known buildings. He is known to have designed around 200 public and commercial buildings in the goldfields area of Central Victoria. He probably also designed dozens of large and small residences that have not been ascribed to his studio. He worked for over 50 years creating much of the visual landscape and the city. He died in 1915 after World War One broke out when sadly a few members of his beloved Masonic Lodge (he had been a member since 1857 and had been the Grand Master) tried to have him expelled because of his Germanic background!
Some of the notable Bendigo buildings designed by William Vahland are: the Alexandria Fountain in Pall Mall 1881; the City Family Hotel 1872; the Commercial Bank of Australia 1875; the original Post Office 1870; the Bendigo Art Gallery 1873 which was originally the Masonic Hall and Temple; the original Art Gallery 1867; the Temperance Hall 1860; the Sandhurst Club Building 1893; the Colonial Bank 1887; the original Shamrock Hotel 1860; the Town Hall 1878; the School of Mines 1864, 1878, 1887 and 1889; St Kilian’s Catholic Church 1888; St Paul’s Anglican Rectory 1885; All Saints Catholic Cathedral 1869; the Wesleyan Methodist church additions 1877; the Congregational Church 1890; the Lutheran Church 1857; the Convent of Mercy 1865; the Goldfields Hospital 1858, 1864 and 1866; the Bendigo Benevolent Asylum 1862, 1864 and 1872 etc. In addition to these significant structures in central Bendigo he designed churches and other public buildings in the outlying areas of Eaglehawk, Long Gully, Ironbark, California Gully, Kangaroo Flat etc.
Gulgong. Population 2,500.
This charming little town was depicted on the original Australian $10 note (from 1966 to 1993) but alas it is not on the new plastic notes. Which is a shame because Gulgong is a very historical town. Its history is well documented especially through a world important photographic collection. The photographers concerned were Henry Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss from Melbourne who photographed almost everything in the town in August 1872. 500 glass plate negatives of their photos have been bought together in the Holtermann Collection which is of international significance and it is housed in “The Greatest Wonder of the World”. This does not refer to the photographic collection but to this building which was a former American tobacco warehouse which adopted this name as an advertising stunt. It is called the Holtermann Collection because the negatives were purchased by Bernard Holtermann after Merlin’s death in 1873. Holtermann added the Gulgong photographs to his extensive collection. The collection is on a UNESCO register of heritage.
The white history of Gulgong goes back to 1821 when William Lawson (the explorer who crossed the Blue Mts in 1813 fame) explored the district. Richard Rouse a squatters moved into the region in 1822 and he and others eventually obtained licenses to legally occupy runs. In 1825 Rouse got a grant of 4,000 acres. When Major Thomas Mitchell came through here in 1831 he named the district Gulgong using an Aboriginal word meaning “deep waterhole”. Although a little gold was discovered in 1866 the district was transformed in 1870 when a major gold lode was discovered and within six weeks 500 people were on the site. The town of Gulgong was surveyed in 1870 and when gazetted in 1872 there was an estimated 20,000 people on the goldfields. 15,000 kilos of gold was extracted from the gold mines over the next decade. Much of the town however dates from the early 1870s and the first developments were around the intersection of Mayne and Hebert streets. Among the early settlers was the family of Henry Lawson and Rolfe Boldrewood the local police man who wrote Robbery Under Arms in 1882. Lawson in 1904 wrote a poem about the gold rush at Gulgong saying
Paid in laughter, tears and nuggets in the play that fortune plays —
'Tis the palmy days of Gulgong — Gulgong in the Roaring Days.
Like all mining towns Gulgong soon had hotels, banks, stores and entertainment venues like the Prince William Opera house. Solid stone and weatherboard houses came soon after. When the gold ran out the businessmen stayed on to service the farming area around the town. The bark hut of the 1871 Union church was replaced with brick and stone churches- The Anglican built theirs in 1876 to a design of architect Edmund Blacket and the Catholics built their first church in 1885 and the Presbyterians replaced their wooden church with a stone church in 1909 and the Methodists built a church in 1871 and replaced it around 1905. The first Town hall was built in 1892, the Courthouse in 1898 etc. A railway reached Gulgong in 1909. After the mining became big business requiring companies and shafts the government opened 24,000 acres around the town up for farming in 1876. Wheat became a major product as well as wool. A flour mill was built near the town and a new large mill in 1894. Once the railway arrived another new flourmill was erected with silos.
The town has more than 130 heritage listed buildings.
National Motor Museum
Established in 1964 it is Australia’s largest motor museum.
The Museum was started by Jack Kaines and Len Vigar and was purchased by the South Australian Government in 1976.
Until 1998 the National Motor Museum’s collection was housed in the old Birdwood Mill.
As an international centre for the collection, research, preservation, education and display of Australian road transport history.
Nestled in the scenic Adelaide Hills wine region, the museum’s grounds are perfect for picnics or a barbecue.
The museum annually hosts the Bay to Birdwood vehicle run.
OPENING OF THE BLUMBERG FLOUR MILLS
Blumberg was quite en fete on Sept 7, when the new "Peerless" Roller Flourmills, belonging to Messrs F Pflaum & Co, were opened by the Commissioner of Crown Lands (Hon J Coles). The members for the district (Messrs Homburg and J L Stirling), besides a large number of gentlemen interested in the neighbourhood were present, and the usual quiet of the township was changed to bustle and excitement.
The following particulars of the firm may be interesting:— Mr F Pflaum, the senior partner of the firm, settled at Blumberg in 1868, and was joined in the following year by his brother, Mr T Pflaum. Their attention was directed to the wattle-bark trade, and in 1872 they took the Blumberg mill, and with its steam power they prepared the bark for the home market, where their brand has become so favourably known that it commands a ready sale, besides being deported to the Continent and New Zealand. The success of the firm excited so much competition on account of its remunerative character that the farmers were encouraged to cultivate the wattle, instead of destroying it as had previously been the case.
The firm also worked the flour-mill on the stone system, but it was found necessary owing to the marked revolution in late years in the machinery used in milling to adopt the principle of roller crushing. Messrs F Pflaum & Co have now gone in for a complete change in the process of preparing the wheat by adopting the gradual reduction or high grinding roller system with all the newest and most complete machinery.
A new building has been erected, 50 feet long by 30 feet wide, with a basement and three floors.
The tender of Mr O E Schumacher, of America, was accepted for the machinery. He has previously erected Messrs J Dunn and Co's roller-mills at Port Adelaide and Port Augusta. A number of the machines in the new "Peerless" rollermill at Blumberg have been manufactured by him in Kilkenny, and they contain various improvements on the imported, such as scalpers, cylindrical flour dressers clothed over spiral wire, wheat graders, gravel separators, middlings grading shakers, shaking roller feeders, aspirators, dust collectors, &c, which are all admirably carried out. The roller machines, centrifugals, and other machinery have been imported from America, being all of the latest construction and excellent finish.
Some of the cleaning machines have been imported from England. The ironworks, such as shaftings, pulleys, plummer blocks, hangers, sprocket wheels, etc, have been made by Messrs A Jones and Sons, Adelaide, according to patterns supplied by Mr Schumacher. The whole of the machinery is driven by a Sulzer Brothers' patent tappet valve engine, which has been imported from Switzerland, and is of nominal ind., 60-horsepower, special patent make, and beautifully constructed, having many high points for effectiveness, regularity of speed, completeness, and simplicity. It is the first of its kind at work in the colony.
The steam power is supplied by two Cornish steel boilers, made with flanged ends and Galloway tubes, their size being 22 feet 6 inches and 19 feet 6 inches respectively, and tested to 140 lb hydraulic pressure. They were manufactured by Messrs A Jones & Sons, Adelaide. The mounting of engine and boilers was done by Mr P J Williams, of North Adelaide, who has also refitted the old engine for driving the bark mill. He has also affixed one of his improved make injectors to boilers for water-feed, which substitutes force pumps. The power is transmitted by four endless ropes from fly-wheel of the new engine to main shaft in new mill, which extends the full length of the basement. From this shaft 14 pairs of rollers on the first floor are driven with endless belt-gear and tightening pulleys, all working very smoothly. Two belts transmit the drive from main shaft to two line-shafts on the second floor, from which the different machines on the second and third floor are driven, as well as elevators (23 in number) which are all fixed in the centre of the building.
The wheat is emptied into a hopper under the verandah, and conveyed along the basement by a long worm into an encased reel, which takes out the heavy dust and any long stuff that may be in the wheat. From the reel it is sent up by an elevator to the dirty wheatbins, of which there are two on the second floor. From the dirty wheatbins it is let on to a zigzag machine (on the first floor) which gives it a further cleaning, taking away dust, chaff, and inferior stuff.
From the zigzag it falls on to a seed-cleaner which takes out all drake and small seeds. From this machine the wheat is taken up in an elevator to an oat and barley separator on the top floor, which takes every grain of oats and barley that may be in the wheat, thus producing a perfectly clean seed wheat, in which the germ has not been destroyed.
Thence the wheat drops into a Richmond scourer on the second floor, which scours the wheat thoroughly and separates the impurities and inferior stuff. From the scourer it falls into a gravel separator on the first floor, separating all stones and other stuff heavier than a grain of wheat. The wheat is then taken up to the brush machine on the top floor, which brushes off all remaining impurities, and then it is conveyed to the clean wheat bins, of which there are four on the second floor. From the clean wheatbins it is taken to a grader (on same floor), which divides the smaller grains from the larger, falling from this onto a separate pair of first break rolls, which break each grain in the crease. The broken grains are then carried to a double scalper for dressing out the crease flour, which is of a dark grey colour, and sent to the pollard. The broken grain is gradually reduced on the second, third, fourth, and fifth break rolls, each time being reduced on the scalpers, which are placed in connection with the aspirators, purifiers, and dust collectors. The middlings and flour taken out by the scalpers go to a cylindrical flour dresser, separating the break-flour, and sending the middlings on to a grading shaker, by which they are graded and sent to three middlings purifiers, which purify and assort the same for the various smooth rolls on which they are gradually reduced into flour.
The products of the smooth rolls are dressed and redressed on seven centrifugals until the results are a "peerless" flour flowing into a flourbin on the second floor, from which it is bagged on the roller-floor by a Eureka flourpacker. All dirty dust from the wheat-cleaning machines is drawn off by various pans into a large dustroom partitioned off in the old mill. The aspirators of the roller machines, purifiers, &c, are each connected with a separate dust collector.
There is also one pair of stones in the new mill for crushing fodder. The old mill has been cleared of its stone gear, &c, and turned into a store room. The cost of the new mill has amounted to about £7,000.
The Hungarian system of crushing wheat by means of rollers had been known for 60 or 70 years, but it had only been perfected by Messrs Ganz & Co of late years.
In 1884 the Scottish millers expended £800,000 in changing their machinery from the old stone process to the roller.
Messrs Pflaum had shown great enterprise in keeping up with the times.
A luncheon was held at the Napoleon Bonaparte Hotel, where Host Millard had prepared an excellent repast. Mr Pflaum occupied the chair, and there were about 50 gentlemen present. [Ref: Express and Telegraph (Adelaide) 12 September 1888]
*Blumberg was a locality named early in 1848. Johann Blumel was one of the earliest settlers there and is believed to have named the place for the town of Blumberg, in the province of Brandenburg, Germany, from where he and other settlers had emigrated. The name was changed to Birdwood in 1918 in honour of Sir William R Birdwood, an English General of World War One who commanded Australian Troops.
Here is the opposite side of Ether's Haunted Roller Mill. As you can see, the building originally was a mill. There is no water nearby, but, then, it's not a grist mill. It's such a wonderful old building.
Gulgong. Population 2,500.
This charming little town was depicted on the original Australian $10 note (from 1966 to 1993) but alas it is not on the new plastic notes. Which is a shame because Gulgong is a very historical town. Its history is well documented especially through a world important photographic collection. The photographers concerned were Henry Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss from Melbourne who photographed almost everything in the town in August 1872. 500 glass plate negatives of their photos have been bought together in the Holtermann Collection which is of international significance and it is housed in “The Greatest Wonder of the World”. This does not refer to the photographic collection but to this building which was a former American tobacco warehouse which adopted this name as an advertising stunt. It is called the Holtermann Collection because the negatives were purchased by Bernard Holtermann after Merlin’s death in 1873. Holtermann added the Gulgong photographs to his extensive collection. The collection is on a UNESCO register of heritage.
The white history of Gulgong goes back to 1821 when William Lawson (the explorer who crossed the Blue Mts in 1813 fame) explored the district. Richard Rouse a squatters moved into the region in 1822 and he and others eventually obtained licenses to legally occupy runs. In 1825 Rouse got a grant of 4,000 acres. When Major Thomas Mitchell came through here in 1831 he named the district Gulgong using an Aboriginal word meaning “deep waterhole”. Although a little gold was discovered in 1866 the district was transformed in 1870 when a major gold lode was discovered and within six weeks 500 people were on the site. The town of Gulgong was surveyed in 1870 and when gazetted in 1872 there was an estimated 20,000 people on the goldfields. 15,000 kilos of gold was extracted from the gold mines over the next decade. Much of the town however dates from the early 1870s and the first developments were around the intersection of Mayne and Hebert streets. Among the early settlers was the family of Henry Lawson and Rolfe Boldrewood the local police man who wrote Robbery Under Arms in 1882. Lawson in 1904 wrote a poem about the gold rush at Gulgong saying
Paid in laughter, tears and nuggets in the play that fortune plays —
'Tis the palmy days of Gulgong — Gulgong in the Roaring Days.
Like all mining towns Gulgong soon had hotels, banks, stores and entertainment venues like the Prince William Opera house. Solid stone and weatherboard houses came soon after. When the gold ran out the businessmen stayed on to service the farming area around the town. The bark hut of the 1871 Union church was replaced with brick and stone churches- The Anglican built theirs in 1876 to a design of architect Edmund Blacket and the Catholics built their first church in 1885 and the Presbyterians replaced their wooden church with a stone church in 1909 and the Methodists built a church in 1871 and replaced it around 1905. The first Town hall was built in 1892, the Courthouse in 1898 etc. A railway reached Gulgong in 1909. After the mining became big business requiring companies and shafts the government opened 24,000 acres around the town up for farming in 1876. Wheat became a major product as well as wool. A flour mill was built near the town and a new large mill in 1894. Once the railway arrived another new flourmill was erected with silos.
The town has more than 130 heritage listed buildings.
Gulgong. Population 2,500.
This charming little town was depicted on the original Australian $10 note (from 1966 to 1993) but alas it is not on the new plastic notes. Which is a shame because Gulgong is a very historical town. Its history is well documented especially through a world important photographic collection. The photographers concerned were Henry Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss from Melbourne who photographed almost everything in the town in August 1872. 500 glass plate negatives of their photos have been bought together in the Holtermann Collection which is of international significance and it is housed in “The Greatest Wonder of the World”. This does not refer to the photographic collection but to this building which was a former American tobacco warehouse which adopted this name as an advertising stunt. It is called the Holtermann Collection because the negatives were purchased by Bernard Holtermann after Merlin’s death in 1873. Holtermann added the Gulgong photographs to his extensive collection. The collection is on a UNESCO register of heritage.
The white history of Gulgong goes back to 1821 when William Lawson (the explorer who crossed the Blue Mts in 1813 fame) explored the district. Richard Rouse a squatters moved into the region in 1822 and he and others eventually obtained licenses to legally occupy runs. In 1825 Rouse got a grant of 4,000 acres. When Major Thomas Mitchell came through here in 1831 he named the district Gulgong using an Aboriginal word meaning “deep waterhole”. Although a little gold was discovered in 1866 the district was transformed in 1870 when a major gold lode was discovered and within six weeks 500 people were on the site. The town of Gulgong was surveyed in 1870 and when gazetted in 1872 there was an estimated 20,000 people on the goldfields. 15,000 kilos of gold was extracted from the gold mines over the next decade. Much of the town however dates from the early 1870s and the first developments were around the intersection of Mayne and Hebert streets. Among the early settlers was the family of Henry Lawson and Rolfe Boldrewood the local police man who wrote Robbery Under Arms in 1882. Lawson in 1904 wrote a poem about the gold rush at Gulgong saying
Paid in laughter, tears and nuggets in the play that fortune plays —
'Tis the palmy days of Gulgong — Gulgong in the Roaring Days.
Like all mining towns Gulgong soon had hotels, banks, stores and entertainment venues like the Prince William Opera house. Solid stone and weatherboard houses came soon after. When the gold ran out the businessmen stayed on to service the farming area around the town. The bark hut of the 1871 Union church was replaced with brick and stone churches- The Anglican built theirs in 1876 to a design of architect Edmund Blacket and the Catholics built their first church in 1885 and the Presbyterians replaced their wooden church with a stone church in 1909 and the Methodists built a church in 1871 and replaced it around 1905. The first Town hall was built in 1892, the Courthouse in 1898 etc. A railway reached Gulgong in 1909. After the mining became big business requiring companies and shafts the government opened 24,000 acres around the town up for farming in 1876. Wheat became a major product as well as wool. A flour mill was built near the town and a new large mill in 1894. Once the railway arrived another new flourmill was erected with silos.
The town has more than 130 heritage listed buildings.
Bendigo.
Bendigo is figuratively and literally the city built on gold. Beneath the modern city is a maze of tunnels and shafts from one of the world’s richest gold finds. Bendigo meant gold. Thirty seven separate quartz reefs lie beneath the city and gold was found in them all. After the first alluvial gold was found in late 1851 diggers started to flock to the goldfields. The wives of two workers on the 200,000 acre Ravenswood sheep run are credited with finding the first alluvial gold on the sheep station but many others have also claimed this distinction. Within weeks there were signs of this gold rush becoming another California type gold rush with hopeful diggers pouring into the gold region from China, Italy, Germany, other parts of the British Empire and the other Australian colonies. The Victorian gold rushes transformed all of the Australian colonies. By mid 1852 there were 20,000 people on the Bendigo mine fields and this later swelled to 40,000 people in the Bendigo region. This figures included around 5,000 to 8,000 Chinese diggers and gold camp followers and businessmen. The names of some of the mines were taken from the gullies and regions of Bendigo and they are now suburbs of Bendigo - Kangaroo Flat, Eaglehawk, Golden Square, Long Gully, California Gully, Ironbark, etc. Gold mining might have begun on Bendigo Creek where the Gold Commissioners, who checked the miners’ licenses and where the police and courts were set up, but mining soon spread through the Bendigo district. Camp Hill overlooking Bendigo Creek and Rosalind Park became the government centre from where police and control was exercised. The old Bendigo Gaol (1859) is still up on the hill there next to the Camp Hill state school (1877). The old government Survey Office was also built here in 1858 at the top of View Street on Camp Hill and the Police Barracks were constructed at the bottom of the hill in 1859.
Bendigo was the world’s richest and biggest gold field until the discovery of the Kalgoorlie goldfields in Western Australian in the early 1890s. It was the largest and most successful goldfield in eastern Australia. Between 1851 and 1954 when the Central Deborah Gold Mine closed in Bendigo some 700,000 kilograms of gold was extracted from the Bendigo region. The value of its gold in current terms would be about $30 billion. The goldfield covered an area roughly 30 kilometres long and 12 kilometres wide. There were thousands of diggers who sought alluvial gold- and found it- in the 1850s before they were replaced by small and large companies who sank deep shafts and dug tunnels to extract the gold from the quartz reefs in the 1860s and later. There were more than 5,000 registered gold mines in Bendigo. This led to Bendigo having its own Stock Exchange so that gold shares could be sold to investors in London and around the world through the marvel of the telegraph. Bendigo had one of the few regional stock exchanges in Australia until it was closed in 2012. At least 140 mine shafts were sunk in Bendigo and some of them reached depths of 1,000 metres or more! Some of the poppet heads for these shafts still remain in Bendigo. One of the last mines to be formed was the Central Deborah Mining Company in 1939 and it was the last to operate. It only closed in 1954. Some of the most famous and successful of the Bendigo mining companies were: Shamrock, New Chum Hill, Lansell’s 222, Victoria Hill, etc. Since the closure of the Central Deborah Mine in 1954 new mining techniques have been used in the 1980s and 1990s to try and extract yet more gold from the old mine shafts and workings. Clearly all the heritage and history of Bendigo is clearly rooted in its gold mining past. Probably no other Town Hall in Australia has 22 carat gold leaf embellishments across the ceiling. The original Town Hall was a simple two storey structure designed by the Town Clerk in 1859. A structure more befitting a wealthy gold mining city was later required and local architect William Vahland was commissioned to transform the Town Hall into a grand structure which he did. His new Town Hall was built between 1878 and 1886 with ornate plaster mouldings on both the interior and exterior and although Vahland’s plan included a clock tower the clock was never installed in the Town Hall tower. It is still one of the grand buildings of Bendigo.
The town of Bendigo did not exist in formal terms until 1890 when a local committee was given the task of trying to decide who actually found the first gold and to decide upon a name for the city. Although the government town was known as Sandhurst, locally the town was always referred to as Bendigo. The committee asked local ratepayers and decided upon Bendigo for the city name in 1891 but they never decided unequivocally who found the first gold there. But they did acknowledged that the claim of Mrs Margaret Kennedy of the Ravenswood Run was probably the best claim. The origins for Bendigo City go back to 1853 when land was surveyed and the city plan drawn up. Pall Mall near Bendigo Creek became the centre for commercial activity and it remains a main thoroughfare. It became a municipality in 1863 and its prosperity ushered in a period of grand building which continued into the 1870s and 1880s. The arrival for the railway from Melbourne in 1862 aided the town greatly in terms of industry and communications for it could now send it products to the markets in Melbourne. By the early 1860s Bendigo had a flourishing industry base with flour mills, woollen mills, tanneries, quarries, foundries, a eucalyptus oil distillery and food production. The open eucalyptus woodland of this area just north of the Great Dividing Range was also felled and timber-cutting and saw milling was another important industry for the town.
Many of the architectural grand buildings of early Bendigo were created from the architectural studio of William Charles (Carl Wilhelm) Vahland and his associates. Vahland was born in Hanover in Germany in 1828. In 1849 he entered the most prestigious building school in Germany to learn the art of architecture. His theory and practical studies began at 6 am and finished at 9:30 pm except for the earlier finish at 7 pm on Saturdays. He studied architecture there for three years and learnt in great depth about Greek classical styles of architecture. His interests in this area influenced his architecture for the rest of his life. In 1852 after completing his studies he practised architect in Bremen and Hamburg before he sailed for the Victorian goldfields in 1854. He travelled immediately to Bendigo but had little success on the goldfields. By 1855 he was employed as carpenter before he became a naturalised British subject in 1857 which was also the year in which he established his own carpentry workshop making puddling cradles for miners. He ran his workshop and later architectural practice with his business partner Robert Getzschmann, with whom he worked until Getzschmann's death in 1875. Within a year or so of 1857 they were both working as architects but Vahland also was founding member of the Bendigo Building Society which later became the Bendigo Bank and he was a Justice of the Peace and he was active in local affairs. He married an English woman in 1859 and built his own residence in Barkley Terrace. Vahland went on to become the preeminent architect of Bendigo. He designed around 80 public structures for the city including a number of its best known buildings. He is known to have designed around 200 public and commercial buildings in the goldfields area of Central Victoria. He probably also designed dozens of large and small residences that have not been ascribed to his studio. He worked for over 50 years creating much of the visual landscape and the city. He died in 1915 after World War One broke out when sadly a few members of his beloved Masonic Lodge (he had been a member since 1857 and had been the Grand Master) tried to have him expelled because of his Germanic background!
Some of the notable Bendigo buildings designed by William Vahland are: the Alexandria Fountain in Pall Mall 1881; the City Family Hotel 1872; the Commercial Bank of Australia 1875; the original Post Office 1870; the Bendigo Art Gallery 1873 which was originally the Masonic Hall and Temple; the original Art Gallery 1867; the Temperance Hall 1860; the Sandhurst Club Building 1893; the Colonial Bank 1887; the original Shamrock Hotel 1860; the Town Hall 1878; the School of Mines 1864, 1878, 1887 and 1889; St Kilian’s Catholic Church 1888; St Paul’s Anglican Rectory 1885; All Saints Catholic Cathedral 1869; the Wesleyan Methodist church additions 1877; the Congregational Church 1890; the Lutheran Church 1857; the Convent of Mercy 1865; the Goldfields Hospital 1858, 1864 and 1866; the Bendigo Benevolent Asylum 1862, 1864 and 1872 etc. In addition to these significant structures in central Bendigo he designed churches and other public buildings in the outlying areas of Eaglehawk, Long Gully, Ironbark, California Gully, Kangaroo Flat etc.
Gulgong. Population 2,500.
This charming little town was depicted on the original Australian $10 note (from 1966 to 1993) but alas it is not on the new plastic notes. Which is a shame because Gulgong is a very historical town. Its history is well documented especially through a world important photographic collection. The photographers concerned were Henry Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss from Melbourne who photographed almost everything in the town in August 1872. 500 glass plate negatives of their photos have been bought together in the Holtermann Collection which is of international significance and it is housed in “The Greatest Wonder of the World”. This does not refer to the photographic collection but to this building which was a former American tobacco warehouse which adopted this name as an advertising stunt. It is called the Holtermann Collection because the negatives were purchased by Bernard Holtermann after Merlin’s death in 1873. Holtermann added the Gulgong photographs to his extensive collection. The collection is on a UNESCO register of heritage.
The white history of Gulgong goes back to 1821 when William Lawson (the explorer who crossed the Blue Mts in 1813 fame) explored the district. Richard Rouse a squatters moved into the region in 1822 and he and others eventually obtained licenses to legally occupy runs. In 1825 Rouse got a grant of 4,000 acres. When Major Thomas Mitchell came through here in 1831 he named the district Gulgong using an Aboriginal word meaning “deep waterhole”. Although a little gold was discovered in 1866 the district was transformed in 1870 when a major gold lode was discovered and within six weeks 500 people were on the site. The town of Gulgong was surveyed in 1870 and when gazetted in 1872 there was an estimated 20,000 people on the goldfields. 15,000 kilos of gold was extracted from the gold mines over the next decade. Much of the town however dates from the early 1870s and the first developments were around the intersection of Mayne and Hebert streets. Among the early settlers was the family of Henry Lawson and Rolfe Boldrewood the local police man who wrote Robbery Under Arms in 1882. Lawson in 1904 wrote a poem about the gold rush at Gulgong saying
Paid in laughter, tears and nuggets in the play that fortune plays —
'Tis the palmy days of Gulgong — Gulgong in the Roaring Days.
Like all mining towns Gulgong soon had hotels, banks, stores and entertainment venues like the Prince William Opera house. Solid stone and weatherboard houses came soon after. When the gold ran out the businessmen stayed on to service the farming area around the town. The bark hut of the 1871 Union church was replaced with brick and stone churches- The Anglican built theirs in 1876 to a design of architect Edmund Blacket and the Catholics built their first church in 1885 and the Presbyterians replaced their wooden church with a stone church in 1909 and the Methodists built a church in 1871 and replaced it around 1905. The first Town hall was built in 1892, the Courthouse in 1898 etc. A railway reached Gulgong in 1909. After the mining became big business requiring companies and shafts the government opened 24,000 acres around the town up for farming in 1876. Wheat became a major product as well as wool. A flour mill was built near the town and a new large mill in 1894. Once the railway arrived another new flourmill was erected with silos.
The town has more than 130 heritage listed buildings.
National Motor Museum
Established in 1964 it is Australia’s largest motor museum.
The Museum was started by Jack Kaines and Len Vigar and was purchased by the South Australian Government in 1976.
Until 1998 the National Motor Museum’s collection was housed in the old Birdwood Mill.
As an international centre for the collection, research, preservation, education and display of Australian road transport history.
Nestled in the scenic Adelaide Hills wine region, the museum’s grounds are perfect for picnics or a barbecue.
The museum annually hosts the Bay to Birdwood vehicle run.
OPENING OF THE BLUMBERG FLOUR MILLS
Blumberg was quite en fete on Sept 7, when the new "Peerless" Roller Flourmills, belonging to Messrs F Pflaum & Co, were opened by the Commissioner of Crown Lands (Hon J Coles). The members for the district (Messrs Homburg and J L Stirling), besides a large number of gentlemen interested in the neighbourhood were present, and the usual quiet of the township was changed to bustle and excitement.
The following particulars of the firm may be interesting:— Mr F Pflaum, the senior partner of the firm, settled at Blumberg in 1868, and was joined in the following year by his brother, Mr T Pflaum. Their attention was directed to the wattle-bark trade, and in 1872 they took the Blumberg mill, and with its steam power they prepared the bark for the home market, where their brand has become so favourably known that it commands a ready sale, besides being deported to the Continent and New Zealand. The success of the firm excited so much competition on account of its remunerative character that the farmers were encouraged to cultivate the wattle, instead of destroying it as had previously been the case.
The firm also worked the flour-mill on the stone system, but it was found necessary owing to the marked revolution in late years in the machinery used in milling to adopt the principle of roller crushing. Messrs F Pflaum & Co have now gone in for a complete change in the process of preparing the wheat by adopting the gradual reduction or high grinding roller system with all the newest and most complete machinery.
A new building has been erected, 50 feet long by 30 feet wide, with a basement and three floors.
The tender of Mr O E Schumacher, of America, was accepted for the machinery. He has previously erected Messrs J Dunn and Co's roller-mills at Port Adelaide and Port Augusta. A number of the machines in the new "Peerless" rollermill at Blumberg have been manufactured by him in Kilkenny, and they contain various improvements on the imported, such as scalpers, cylindrical flour dressers clothed over spiral wire, wheat graders, gravel separators, middlings grading shakers, shaking roller feeders, aspirators, dust collectors, &c, which are all admirably carried out. The roller machines, centrifugals, and other machinery have been imported from America, being all of the latest construction and excellent finish.
Some of the cleaning machines have been imported from England. The ironworks, such as shaftings, pulleys, plummer blocks, hangers, sprocket wheels, etc, have been made by Messrs A Jones and Sons, Adelaide, according to patterns supplied by Mr Schumacher. The whole of the machinery is driven by a Sulzer Brothers' patent tappet valve engine, which has been imported from Switzerland, and is of nominal ind., 60-horsepower, special patent make, and beautifully constructed, having many high points for effectiveness, regularity of speed, completeness, and simplicity. It is the first of its kind at work in the colony.
The steam power is supplied by two Cornish steel boilers, made with flanged ends and Galloway tubes, their size being 22 feet 6 inches and 19 feet 6 inches respectively, and tested to 140 lb hydraulic pressure. They were manufactured by Messrs A Jones & Sons, Adelaide. The mounting of engine and boilers was done by Mr P J Williams, of North Adelaide, who has also refitted the old engine for driving the bark mill. He has also affixed one of his improved make injectors to boilers for water-feed, which substitutes force pumps. The power is transmitted by four endless ropes from fly-wheel of the new engine to main shaft in new mill, which extends the full length of the basement. From this shaft 14 pairs of rollers on the first floor are driven with endless belt-gear and tightening pulleys, all working very smoothly. Two belts transmit the drive from main shaft to two line-shafts on the second floor, from which the different machines on the second and third floor are driven, as well as elevators (23 in number) which are all fixed in the centre of the building.
The wheat is emptied into a hopper under the verandah, and conveyed along the basement by a long worm into an encased reel, which takes out the heavy dust and any long stuff that may be in the wheat. From the reel it is sent up by an elevator to the dirty wheatbins, of which there are two on the second floor. From the dirty wheatbins it is let on to a zigzag machine (on the first floor) which gives it a further cleaning, taking away dust, chaff, and inferior stuff.
From the zigzag it falls on to a seed-cleaner which takes out all drake and small seeds. From this machine the wheat is taken up in an elevator to an oat and barley separator on the top floor, which takes every grain of oats and barley that may be in the wheat, thus producing a perfectly clean seed wheat, in which the germ has not been destroyed.
Thence the wheat drops into a Richmond scourer on the second floor, which scours the wheat thoroughly and separates the impurities and inferior stuff. From the scourer it falls into a gravel separator on the first floor, separating all stones and other stuff heavier than a grain of wheat. The wheat is then taken up to the brush machine on the top floor, which brushes off all remaining impurities, and then it is conveyed to the clean wheat bins, of which there are four on the second floor. From the clean wheatbins it is taken to a grader (on same floor), which divides the smaller grains from the larger, falling from this onto a separate pair of first break rolls, which break each grain in the crease. The broken grains are then carried to a double scalper for dressing out the crease flour, which is of a dark grey colour, and sent to the pollard. The broken grain is gradually reduced on the second, third, fourth, and fifth break rolls, each time being reduced on the scalpers, which are placed in connection with the aspirators, purifiers, and dust collectors. The middlings and flour taken out by the scalpers go to a cylindrical flour dresser, separating the break-flour, and sending the middlings on to a grading shaker, by which they are graded and sent to three middlings purifiers, which purify and assort the same for the various smooth rolls on which they are gradually reduced into flour.
The products of the smooth rolls are dressed and redressed on seven centrifugals until the results are a "peerless" flour flowing into a flourbin on the second floor, from which it is bagged on the roller-floor by a Eureka flourpacker. All dirty dust from the wheat-cleaning machines is drawn off by various pans into a large dustroom partitioned off in the old mill. The aspirators of the roller machines, purifiers, &c, are each connected with a separate dust collector.
There is also one pair of stones in the new mill for crushing fodder. The old mill has been cleared of its stone gear, &c, and turned into a store room. The cost of the new mill has amounted to about £7,000.
The Hungarian system of crushing wheat by means of rollers had been known for 60 or 70 years, but it had only been perfected by Messrs Ganz & Co of late years.
In 1884 the Scottish millers expended £800,000 in changing their machinery from the old stone process to the roller.
Messrs Pflaum had shown great enterprise in keeping up with the times.
A luncheon was held at the Napoleon Bonaparte Hotel, where Host Millard had prepared an excellent repast. Mr Pflaum occupied the chair, and there were about 50 gentlemen present. [Ref: Express and Telegraph (Adelaide) 12 September 1888]
*Blumberg was a locality named early in 1848. Johann Blumel was one of the earliest settlers there and is believed to have named the place for the town of Blumberg, in the province of Brandenburg, Germany, from where he and other settlers had emigrated. The name was changed to Birdwood in 1918 in honour of Sir William R Birdwood, an English General of World War One who commanded Australian Troops.
Lehigh Canal, Central RR of New Jersey station "Main Street Depot" built in 1873 in Bethlehem. Postmarked 1910 but photo is probably earlier. Someone on Facebook gave me the name and address of it now: It is restored and a restaurant and cigar bar: The Wooden Match, 61 W. Lehigh Street, Bethlehem. www.thewoodenmatch.com