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The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory is a heritage-listed factory at 57 Brook Street, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.It is also known as Dairy Farmers Factory. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 18 April 2008. == History == The former Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory, located on Brook Street, Toowoomba, is associated closely with the development of the Queensland dairy industry and with the emergence of the Darling Downs as a principal dairy producing region during the early to mid-twentieth century. The original butter factory, made of timber, was constructed in 1905. This was rebuilt in 1929 in brick and concrete, and extended at a later date. As the importance of dairying to Queensland expanded during the 1930s and 1940s, additional structures were erected on the site, including an administration building (early 1930s), laboratory (1936), an engine and refrigeration building (c.1930s), generator, sub-station, and boiler room (all c.1930s), and a milk and cheese processing factory (late 1930s-early 1940s). Further additions, extensions and renovations were undertaken post-1940s.〔 By the 1890s the Queensland government had identified the expansion of agriculture, especially dairying, as a key means of encouraging closer settlement and boosting the Queensland economy. The expansion of dairying as a commercial activity was made possible by a number of advances in technology in the late nineteenth century, including the availability of refrigerated shipping in Queensland from 1883; the introduction of mechanical cream separators to Queensland in the late 1880s (invented in Europe in 1878; and the development of the Babcock butterfat test. Government intervention to encourage commercial dairying took a variety of forms. In the late 1880s and early 1890s the Queensland Department of Agriculture established Travelling Dairies that toured Queensland via the railway network, demonstrating and promoting techniques and equipment to potential dairy farmers and butter and cheese producers. Government grading of butter was introduced, and a series of Meat and Dairy Produce Acts between 1893 and 1904 facilitated the establishment of co-operative butter and cheese factories. Between 1894 and 1919 land repurchased from pastoralists under the provisions of the 1894 Agricultural Lands Purchase Act was resurveyed as agricultural selections, and closer settlement legislation between 1906 and 1917 assisted in the creation of small agricultural service towns. Heavy government expenditure on railway construction in the first two decades of the twentieth century was a significant catalyst for the expansion of dairying, extending the Queensland railway network from 3,500 kilometres in 1890 to 6,300 kilometres by 1910 and to 9,300 kilometres by 1920. Between 1910 and 1920, most new railway construction was of branch lines for agriculture.〔 Between the 1910s and the 1960s, dairying made a significant contribution to the Queensland economy, not only with the direct sales of dairy products both domestically and internationally, but also because dairying encouraged closer settlement of the land and wide-scale crop production. During the economic depression of the 1930s dairying was the most widespread agricultural activity in Queensland, which became known as the "dairy state". Regular cream cheques kept many rural families on the land during these years. Between 1936 and 1941, dairying was Queensland's second most profitable export industry.〔 The co-operative movement, in which producers held shares in enterprises that processed and sold their product, evolved in Switzerland during the 1880s, and was transferred from Victoria to Queensland by dairy immigrants during the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1901 an initial attempt to form a Downs Dairy Co-operative was made by a handful of dairymen meeting at Wellcamp, but faltered due to lack of financial support. The proposal was resurrected in April 1904 at a meeting at Westbrook, at which it was resolved to establish a centrally located butter factory adjacent to the railway at or near Toowoomba. The committee formed to deliver the proposal determined in May 1904 that the company be formed solely of farmers or dairymen; that only new equipment be installed at the factory; and that the position of manager of the factory be advertised nationally. A prospectus offering shares at £1 each was adopted by June 1904 and received significant local support, on the strength of which a site adjoining the Southern and Western Railway at Brook Street in Toowoomba was acquired and tenders called for the construction of a butter factory. Construction commenced in 1905 and the single-storey timber structure incorporating both butter factory and refrigeration room was opened by Hon. James Tolmie in November 1905, although manufacturing had commenced in the previous month.〔 The co-operative adopted the brand name "Unity" with an accompanying trade mark symbol: a bundle of sticks denoting collective strength. The factory was financial from the start, with turnover during the first year of £61,299. The Co-operative's success encouraged the formation of other dairy co-operatives and the consolidation of dairying as a principal economic activity on the Darling Downs. Following the opening of the Co-operative's Toowoomba factory in 1905 the Darling Downs dairy herd quadrupled in size from just over 20,000 head to almost 90,000, and grew to just under 220,000 by 1945. By the 1950s the Darling Downs produced over 25 pre cent of Queensland's dairy output.〔 The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association soon expanded, constructing or purchasing branch butter factories at Miles (1911), Clifton (1912), Dalby (1915) and Crows Nest (1918). World War I (1914-1918) stimulated cheese manufacturing in Queensland, prompting the Co-operative to establish or acquire branch cheese factories at Hodgson Vale (1915), Jondaryan (1919), Gowrie Junction (1920), Bouda (1926), Lilyvale (1926) and Wyreema (1927). However, the Toowoomba factory remained the Co-operative's flagship facility and administrative headquarters throughout the twentieth century.〔 In the late 1920s/early 1930s the Co-operative's success enabled it to re-build a number of its timber butter factories in concrete and brick - Dalby (1927), Toowoomba (1929), Clifton (1933) and Goombungee (1934) - but during the economic downturn of the early 1930s closed a number of its cheese factories.〔 In the reconstruction of the Toowoomba factory the wooden buildings were removed section by section and replaced insitu by new concrete and brick structures.〔 To maintain the prestige and reputation of the Unity brand of products through quality control of all aspects of butter and later milk and cheese production, a laboratory (Science Building) was constructed at the Toowoomba factory in 1936. In 1938 the Co-operative gained exclusive right to the distribution of pasteurised milk in Toowoomba, and new facilities were constructed at the Toowoomba factory to handle milk pasteurising and bottling. In 1939 the Co-operative centralised its entire milk supply at Toowoomba, enabling more efficient cheese production, leading to unprecedented growth in the region and to further extensions to the Toowoomba factory, completed in 1940.〔 World War II (1939-1945) placed tremendous demands on Australian primary production and with the arrival of thousands of American troops in south-east Queensland the Darling Downs experienced marked growth in butter and cheese production and in demand for whole pasteurised milk. Milk production levels were sustained in the post-war years, with milk from the Toowoomba factory transported by rail as far west as Quilpie and Cunnamulla while new bulk road transports supplied the Brisbane market. The Co-operative continued to expand and in 1953 a new plant for the concentration and drying of milk products was opened.〔 The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association benefited from its close association with two prominent figures in the Australian dairy industry during the first half of the twentieth century: James Purcell and James Henry Cecil Roberts. Through these men the Co-operative influenced dairying policy at state and national levels.〔 Purcell was a leading figure in the Australian dairy industry, serving as chairman of the Commonwealth Dairy Produce Equalization Committee between 1934 and 1950. In 1904 he helped to form the Downs Co-operative Dairy Company (later Association) and remained a director until 1932. He was chairman of the Association in 1912-1917, 1918-1919 and 1920-1932. Purcell played a major role in the formulation of state, federal and empire/commonwealth dairying policies throughout the first half of the twentieth century.〔 Roberts was a director of the Downs Co-operative Dairy Association between 1932 and 1942 and chairman of directors for four years. He was prominent in Queensland's political and economic history, being an important anti-labor figure. He founded the Darling Downs Farmers Union in 1911 and was one of the founders of the Queensland Country Party in 1936.〔 In the 1960s the Co-operative moved from butter-based production to cheese and milk-based products, including subsidiary products such as yoghurt and calf food, in anticipation of the loss of its principal overseas market when Britain would eventually join the European common market (1973). The loss of the British market forced a rationalisation of the Queensland dairying industry, reducing the dairy herd and large areas of the Downs being converted from dairying to grain-growing. While the industry contracted and the smaller factories closed, the Downs Co-operative Dairy Association factory in Toowoomba remained viable and in 1985 a new milk powder factory was constructed on the site. Deregulation of the Queensland dairy industry between 1998 and 2003 ultimately resulted in a 2005 decision by the Co-operative to rationalise production, which effectively ended the future of the Toowoomba factory, which closed in 2006.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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