Australian Plaster Industries Pty Ltd

Trading Name	Australian Plaster Industries Pty Ltd
Years of Operation	(Incorporated 1926) in Oakleigh 1939 to 1985
Company Number
Address	73 Westminster Street Oakleigh, Bounded  by the Railway Line to the South,   Westminster Street to the East and  Downing Street to the West.  Factories  on Regent Street are to the North.
Council Lot No.
Coordinates	-37.904251,145.094279
Current Use	Vacant land covered with concrete floor

Bricks are only part of the story in Oakleigh.  The bricks may go on the outside, but plaster goes on the inside.  Usually wood goes in between.  The Foresters Arms Hotel is a remnant of Oakleigh’s long vanished timber industry.  As late as the 1890’s wood cutting competitions were still being held around town, but I digress.  I am including this story in memory of my Uncle Frank, a plasterer.

Going back a few years, the “Australian Gypsum and Whiting Company” was started in South Australia by William Robert Innes, after whom the town of Inneston and nearby National Park was named.   He began mining gypsum at Marion Bay to make plaster.  This is where the raw material came from for making plaster in Westminster Street.  After manufacturing ceased in Oakleigh, plaster making began at Marion Bay.

Old Gypsum Mine, Marion S.A.

Plaster can be made into fibrous plaster, plaster board, plaster moulds for pottery and cornice mouldings as well as other plaster decorations.  Some of you of mature years will have had a plaster mould taken when the Dentist fitted you for your false teeth.  It’s manufacture is a simple three stage process.

Plaster has been used by us for over 4000 years as a building material and is made by heating gypsum to 150 °C.  This first stage of the process is called “calcination” and removes water from the gypsum.  Before it is dried, the gypsum is dried and ground to a fine powder in a heated mill.  Next it went into large steel kettles where it was heated by gas burners and stirred with paddles to prevent overheating.  The powder was then put into hoppers to cool the plaster.  It was ground again and stored for further processing.

At this point it was known as stucco or Plaster of Paris, so called because the original deposit of gypsum was found under Montmatre in Paris.  It is one of the reasons why there are no high rise buildings there.  The ground underneath Paris is honeycombed with tunnels, not all from mining gypsum.  Some of the plaster was sold at this point as “Plaster of Paris.”

Rehydration is the second stage where the dried plaster powder is mixed with water and any other additives until it forms a thick paste, or slurry.   Some of the additives, such as starch are there to help the plaster bond with the cardboard, others are as thickeners.

The third stage was setting or simply to allow the plaster to dry by evaporation.  It comes out of moulds easily.  Some is dried to 250°C for around an hour.  Plaster board was put onto drying racks where they were stored until needed.

As well as its brick works, Oakleigh was also home to many industries associated with the building industry.  One of these was Australian Plaster Industries Pty Ltd.  Approaching what is left of one of the Oakleigh sites is like seeing the jagged remains of a broken tooth.  Sitting forlorn on a pad of windswept concrete, it waits for action on its future.

The site occupies an area of approximately 2 hectares on the Southern side of the railway line to Dandenong to the East of the Oakleigh Railway Station, Oakleigh, Victoria.    The majority of the site formerly occupied by the plaster works has been demolished with the chimney, part of the boiler house and one hopper remaining.  The remains have not been well secured and have suffered from vandalism and graffiti. 

The concrete floors and some foundation walls remain to show the sites previous use as a brickworks following demolition of the sheds after sale to the current occupiers.  A part demolition of the remaining chimney in 2009 has caused controversy and some adverse publicity.

Aerial View of the Now Demolished Plaster Works

The site was originally occupied by the Turbine Pulmotor Company Pty Ltd until 1930.  Even back in the 1920s, Oakleigh had advanced technology being manufactured there.  The Turbine Pulmotor Company Pty Ltd manufactured the “Pulmotor”, an artificial respirator machine that pumped either air or oxygen into and out of a person through a mask or tracheal tube.  Pressure was regulated to prevent damage.  It was believed successful in helping stillborn babies to breathe.  Short for Pulmonary Motor, it was a portable device patented in 1907.  Reports of its success were mixed. 

Next came the Concrete Specialty Company, then Australian Plaster Industries.  Boral Australian Gypsum were the last occupants of the site.

The plant was built c.1946-48 as part of a new plasterboard factory for Australian Plaster Industries Ltd. The briquette fired water-tube boiler supplied steam for drying plasterboard until it was made redundant by direct firing in 1970. The saw tooth roof brick building with steel window and roof trusses housed the main board production machine as well as warehouse facilities. It was built in two stages, being doubled in size in 1958.

The factory is significant because in 1948 it was the first factory in Victoria where plaster board was manufactured on an industrial scale. Plaster board changed the way buildings were constructed by greatly improving the efficiency of construction through the use of large sheets of pre-made plaster board for lining internal walls. This board was erected dry, eliminating delays caused by waiting for older style lathe-and-plaster to set; it was also more amenable to mass production and easier to install than fibrous plaster sheets. The plant was strategically important to Australia's construction industry during a time of intensive building activity and material shortages following World War Two. 

Aerial View 1945

The chimney has an aesthetic significance as a tall prominent feature of the local landscape associated with the industrial use of the area. It is easily visible from the surrounding area and from the adjacent railway line. Once common, large brick chimneys associated with industry are few in number and increasingly threatened with demolition. Many have been truncated, or had their associated boiler house, kiln, or factory which used the heat or steam, demolished.

Classified: 06/07/2009

The boiler house and chimney are a rare example of a large and relatively intact boiler house and chimney associated with the post war period of Victoria's industrialization. The location of the boiler house adjacent to the Gippsland railway line is historically significant as it was specifically located next to the railway line to enable the delivery of fuel for the boiler. 

The use of briquettes as a fuel has largely been replaced by natural gas, but the closure of the boiler house in 1970 resulted in this plant not undergoing the conversion to natural gas which has occurred at most other boiler installations. As a result of this, it is one of the few surviving examples of a large briquette fired water-tube boiler and associated brick chimney in a manufacturing context in Melbourne. It provides direct evidence of the Latrobe Valley briquette industry which underpinned Victoria's industrial development from the 1930s until the 1960s, during which time production of briquettes more than trebled. The use of SECV produced briquettes provided a cost effective fuel for industry and reduced Victoria's reliance on black coal from NSW.

1950 Expansion

The boiler house was once a large and relatively intact example of an industrial boiler complex. The boiler, chimney, briquette overhead storage bunker, briquette elevating conveyor, mechanical stoker, and steam driven feed pump are all still present, but theft, exposure and vandalism has taken its toll.  Anything of value has been stolen and the exterior cladding is now long-gone.  The four-drum water-tube boiler, built to a design by John Thompson & Co., Wolverhampton, was probably made at their local West Footscray factory.  It is a rare surviving example of a once-common form of industrial plant: water-tube boilers played a key role in Victoria's twentieth century manufacturing development; they produced high volumes of steam with greater efficiency than conventional fire-tube boilers; they were also inherently safer.

The plant also pre-dates the construction of fully unattended automatic boilers and is illustrative of the work practices of the period which required a full-time boiler attendant. Boilers were installed by industry to generate steam for use in manufacturing processes, driving steam engines which in turn drove line shafting, or for steam engines and turbines driving electricity generators. The advent of the SECV in the 1920s and the development of the state power grid saw a reduction in factories generating their own power. By the 1940s the main reason for building a new boiler house was to provide process steam. This boiler house provided steam for heating at the drying stage of plasterboard production.

If you want a more detailed report on the property, click on the link below.

http://planningschemes.dpcd.vic.gov.au/Shared/ats.nsf/(attachmentopen)/F354076768B7812FCA2577DD000AAD5B/$File/exh+C97+Support+Doc+-+Heritage+Citation+HO91+Westminster+St+19-17.pdf?OpenElement