In 2015 I was commissioned to make images at the Amcor Paper Mill before it was to be demolished. Operating under its original Australian Paper Manufacturers name, the factory was built around 1919.
The ‘Satanic Mills’ of human industry. Look at all the labor, the planning, the human ingenuity, the huge financial investment, the organisation, the resources, vast amount of materials that went into these structures, these elaborate constructions of steel and concrete… Think of all the men who spent their lives in this place, sweated and toiled here, to support their families, who breathed in the caustic chemicals day in day out, the mechanics and engineers who maintained all these machines and fixtures to keep them operating…
And now, all that is gone. All that labor and struggle that built and operated these massive, powerful edifices… all gone. Knocked down, not a trace, obliterated. Who will remember? Best forgotten, some would say. Junk. Scrap.
What’s left? These photos. Some day soon that’s all that will be left to tell the tale of this place and what went on there.
