page_title: Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd Factory
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd Factory / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd., Mackay, 1937 Weatherboard building incorporating the Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd., (Mackay Branch). Building features include an awning over the loading dock, a raised platform for loading and unloading produce transported in churns. Signage for this firm is displayed over and on the awning which describes the business operation of this factory. The company was involved in the manufacture and storage of butter and other dairy products.
context_page_description: Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd Factory is a heritage-listed former factory at 6 Short Street, Gladstone, Gladstone Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1929 to 1949. It is also known as PCD Factory and Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Company Ltd Factory. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 30 March 2001.
context_section_description: The Port Curtis Dairy Company Ltd (the PCD) was formed at Gladstone in 1904, with its first timber factory buildings erected at Gladstone in 1906. By the 1920s, the PCD was one of the largest co-operative dairy companies in Queensland. The activities of the PCD at Gladstone and in surrounding districts stimulated the expansion of commercial dairying in Central Queensland. Statewide, dairying was an important economic activity for the first half of the 20th century, and a mainstay for farming communities during the economic depression of the early 1930s. Surviving elements of the Gladstone factory site include the 1929-1930 factory building, an early factory office building, several cold stores, a c. 1938 single-storeyed office building with two- storeyed extensions erected 1948-1950, a 1938 re-tinning shed, an ice shed and store room erected during the Second World War, and sections of a 1914 railway siding and 1923 siding extension.
  From the late 1880s, the Queensland government promoted the establishment of dairying in Queensland as a commercial, rather than subsistence, activity. The development of dairying as a staple industry was considered a means of relieving selector poverty and debt, and as encouragement to closer settlement of the land. The Meat and Dairy Produce Act 1893 was introduced to offer subsidies to dairy farmers and a tax on cattle, the latter funding the establishment of creameries, cheese and butter factories throughout Queensland. In 1895, Queensland produced its first butter surplus.
  The real catalyst for the establishment of commercial dairying proved to be the Agricultural Lands Purchase Act 1894, under which valuable agricultural land long freeholded by pastoralists was repurchased by the government, then offered as selections (mostly on perpetual lease) to agriculturalists. By the late 19th century, pastoralists could no longer afford to maintain huge freeholds, and were keen to relinquish land through repurchase. In the Gladstone district, the 1894 Act led to the opening of the Boyne Valley to selection and closer settlement, and this, combined with the provisions of the Meat and Dairy Produce Act 1893, ultimately led to the establishment of a meatworks (1896) and a butter factory (1906) at Gladstone. The Closer Settlement Act 1906 with its provisions for repurchase and on-selling to agriculturalists as settlement farm leases, led to a dairying boom in the Mount Larcom and Yarwun districts behind Gladstone. The Queensland government further supported agriculturalists with its establishment in 1901 of the Queensland Agricultural Bank, aimed at increasing the flow of credit to selectors, further stimulating the dairying industry.
  The Queensland Government also intervened to maintain and enhance standards within the dairying industry. In 1898 the government introduced compulsory grading of butter and cream, prohibiting the mixing of all states of cream (fresh, ripe and stale) in the same vat. The Dairy Produce Acts 1904-05 provided further quality control with the introduction of Government inspection of dairies and factories. In addition, Queensland's Margarine Act 1910 restricting the use of margarine, was aimed at protecting the local dairying industry.
  One of the most distinctive characteristics of the early Queensland dairy industry was its organisation along co-operative lines. The co-operative movement, established in Switzerland in the 1880s, gained worldwide popularity at the Second International Dairy Conference held in 1905, but Queensland farmers were experimenting with the concept from the 1890s. In the 1890s and early 1900s, Victorian "dairy immigrants" also brought ideas about co-operatives to Queensland.
  In November 1903, a public meeting was held at the Gladstone Town Hall to gauge local interest in forming a co-operative dairy company and erecting a dairy factory at Gladstone. Supported by graziers and selectors alike, a provisional committee was elected, representing Mount Larcombe, Calliope, Clyde Creek, Boyne River, Gladstone, Bororen, and Miriam Vale. The committee canvasse
caption: Port Curtis Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd., Mackay, 1937
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