The Ross River Meatworks Chimney is a heritage-listed abattoir at Stuart Drive, Idalia, City of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. It is the 11th tallest structure in Townsville. It was built as part of the Ross River Meatworks in 1891 William McCallum Park and is now a major landmark as part of Fairfield Waters and part of Lancinis Springbank urban village. It was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 14 August 2009.
History The Ross River Meatworks was established by the Queensland Meat Export and Agency Company during 1891–1892 as the first purpose-built meat freezing works in Queensland. Located on the banks of Ross River in suburban Townsville, the high brick chimney remains the principal surviving evidence of an important meatworks in Queensland during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The only Queensland meatworks from this era still in operation is at Lakes Creek, near Rockhampton, established in 1871 for the production of canned beef before shifting to frozen beef for export in the 1880s. Its early brick chimney has not survived.
Although the wool industry was the impetus for early pastoral activity in Queensland, cattle soon proved better suited to the wetter conditions in northern areas. However, early development of a Queensland cattle industry was hindered by the lack of a sufficiently large market for fresh beef. In the 1860s excess stock were disposed of by selling to other graziers or to boiling down works.
Ports to service the new pastoral runs being taken up in northern and far north-western Queensland in the early 1860s were established at Port Denison (Bowen) in 1861 and Cleveland Bay (Townsville) in 1864, with Cleveland Bay declared a Port of Entry in 1865. Entrepreneur and businessman Robert Towns (after whom Townsville is named) and his business partner John Melton Black founded the settlement at Cleveland Bay to supply their pastoral leases in the hinterland.
By the mid-1860s, drought and recession had led to a collapse in the pastoral industry in north Queensland. In order to salvage some profit, squatters turned to the boiling down of sheep and cattle for tallow (for candles and soap). Hoofs and horns were utilised for oil, and hides for leather. In 1864 a number of small-scale boiling down works were established on pastoral properties in the Kennedy and gulf districts, but the boiling down industry became more professional in 1866, when Towns & Co. opened a boiling down plant at Cleveland Bay, and Morehead & Young, partners in the Scottish Australian Pastoral Company, opened a similar operation on the Albert River where the settlement of Burketown had been established in 1865. Neither of these establishments survived for any length of time. At Cleveland Bay, the Queensland Meat Export Company established a meatworks south of Townsville on Alligator Creek in 1879, using some of the equipment from Towns' factory. This became commonly known as the Alligator Creek meatworks.
Following the discovery of gold at Charters Towers in 1871, a railway from Townsville to the goldfield was constructed between 1879 and 1882. The first trains carried both gold and wool from local graziers back to the port of Townsville. Demand led to the approval of a western extension to Hughenden to service the cattle grazing industry. The Northern Railway opened in 1887 and soon became the most profitable in Queensland as graziers took up land along its route. During the 1870s the increase in population at newly opened Queensland gold fields, particularly on the Palmer River, provided a ready market for beef. By the end of the decade there was an oversupply. Following the drought of 1884–1886 cattle were driven overland to southern markets, but droving costs led to a huge reduction in profitability. There was a need to establish a processing industry in north Queensland to supply meat for an export market. Frozen meat proved to be the solution.
Australian experimentation with meat-freezing works and the fitting out of refrigerated ships to carry frozen meat to Britain was initiated in Sydney and Melbourne, with mixed results. Refinements in processing and shipping led to a successful shipment in 1880. The Central Queensland Meat Export Company's works at Lakes Creek installed freezing equipment in 1883, but was burnt down shortly after. A meat freezing works was established at Poole Island off Bowen in 1884, but its first shipment was lost in a tornado. In 1889 the North Queensland Meat Export Company restarted the Alligator Creek works, initially for boiling down and preserving, and later utilising the freezing equipment from Poole Island.
In November 1890 the Queensland Meat and Export Agency Company formed with the intention of establishing purpose-built meat freezing works at Townsville and in Brisbane. By February 1891, following the subscription of shares, it was decided to proceed with construction of a meatworks at Townsville. Plans were made for a second works at Eagle Farm in Brisbane mid year. A contract was entered into with the British India Steam Navigation Company to transport the meat to Britain.
Six acres (2.43ha) of land on the banks of Ross River were acquired from the Idalia Land Company in August 1891 and twenty-five acres (10.12ha) of crown land were allocated nearby for drafting yards. A short branch line to the railway linked the works with the wharves. Construction began in September 1891 under the supervision of contractor William McCallum Park. By late September the site was laid out, concrete foundations were in place and construction of workers cottages had commenced. A light tramway was built to haul sand for the concrete from the riverbank. The works was to be steam-driven, necessitating the construction of a huge brick chimney. The foundations for the chimney consisted of a square of concrete built deep to support the tall brick superstructure. The bricks were baked on site.
The Ross River Meatworks Chimney was one of at least 30 nineteenth century industrial brick chimneys in the Townsville region (extending north to Ingham, south to the Burdekin River and west to Cloncurry), marking the sites of steam-driven pyrites works, batteries, mines, sawmills, brick works, water works, soap works, breweries, meat works and sugar mills. Most were the work of highly skilled bricklayers. The chimneys took a variety of forms, including square, round and hexagonal. Some round or hexagonal chimneys were constructed on square plinths, as at the Ross River Meatworks. They were markers of the steam age in nineteenth century Queensland. The Ross River Meatworks Chimney is the only surviving nineteenth century brick chimney in the immediate Townsville area. Regionally, the 1889 brick chimney at the former Burdekin River Pumping Station at Charters Towers (Burdekin River Pumping Station) also survives.
Despite on-going industrial action by carpenters and bricklayers, the Ross River Meatworks began operation on 28 June 1892. The plant was coal powered, with six Babcock and Wilcox 96-horsepower safety tubular boilers supplying steam for the various engines. Cattle and sheep were processed separately. An overhead tramway transported the carcasses to a cooling room, then into the freezing, canning or preserving rooms. In the freezing room, the two compound engines could produce 400 horsepower each and each machine could circulate of air per hour. The freezing and cold storage building was about square and two storeys high. The refrigeration machinery was a combination of Bell-Coleman and Haslam machines, which circulated cold air and removed moisture and impure air at the same time. Electric lighting powered by a Crompton dynamo was installed by Barton and White electrical engineers - 31 years prior to the provision of public electric lighting in Townsville. In August 1892 the Ross River meatworks was inspected by New Zealand industry experts, who described the works as "superior to any in the colony - actively engaged in the meat export trade".
The company had a difficult time in its first year of production and initial shipments of meat from Townsville were unsuccessful. Transport from Ross River was problematic with the meat taken by rail to the Townsville wharf, then loaded aboard a lighter, and reloaded for shipping to London. It is unclear which part of the process failed, but the first shipment arrived in London in early December 1892 in a putrid state. At the same time the directors had taken out further loans because of numerous unforeseen expenses in the construction of both meatworks. The next shipment to reach England in mid-January included meat from the company's recently opened Eagle Farm meatworks, but was partially spoilt. The 1893 Brisbane floods silted up the Brisbane River inhibiting coastal shipping and halting production from both meatworks for some time. Another shipment of Townsville meat which arrived in London in May was also found to be tainted. The company overcame its early problems and appointed a new director, William Forrest in January 1893. He soon became Chairman of the Board and is credited with turning the company into a successful enterprise.
The Meat and Dairy Produce Encouragement Act 1893 provided loans for meat and dairy works funded through a tax on sheep and cattle. The Queensland Meat and Export Agency Company applied for funds to duplicate and upgrade both the Townsville and Eagle Farms works. The agents for Linde British Refrigeration, J Wildridge and Sinclair Ltd, were contracted to undertake the extension projects. The £30,000 extension at Ross River doubled the freezing capacity. The four new store rooms could hold each and the chilling room could hold 120 bullocks. Other additions included new engine and boiler houses, a fresh water reservoir and pumping station and additional slaughtering yards and pens. By the time the extensions were completed in April 1895, the meatworks was reported to have processed 50,000 head of cattle and 13,000 sheep since opening. An international study of the frozen meat trade, published in 1912, stated that the Townsville works of QME&A was the most up to date freezing works in existence in either hemisphere. It also had the largest capacity of any meatworks in Australasia at this time.
Ongoing upgrades ensured the best and most economic equipment and methodologies were employed. Even during the drought and the problems associated with ticks in the early 1900s, the Ross River Meatworks was producing more meat than any other establishment in Australasia. In 1901 the company purchased the works of the Burketown Meat Export Co. which operated as a canning works. In 1903 it began purchasing significant grazing properties in north Queensland to engage in fattening cattle and breeding. It contracted to supply beef to American forces based in the Philippines in 1898 and established a cold-storage warehouse in Singapore in 1903. Evidence given by the Eagle Farm manager Charles Ross to the Royal Commission into the Meat Industry in October 1912 indicated that Ross River was at that time processing 3000 cattle a week and new cold storage facilities were under construction. By 1915 the company restructured, forming two organisations - the Queensland Meat Export and Agency Co Ltd (QME&A) and Australia Stock Breeders Company Ltd.