Butter Boxes.

Warrnambool in southwest Victoria has a strong dairy industry that once boasted two factories making thousands of wooden butter boxes.

The first factory was opened in 1896 near the railway station by Welsh immigrant Henry McGennan.

The second factory owned by the Western District Co-Operative Box Company, came a few years later in 1912, on land in South Warrnambool, fronting Pertobe Road. There had been initial negotiations for a single company, but these fell through.

The butter boxes were made with quarter inch sawn boards and timber ply and could hold one cubic foot of butter.

Every three months around 1,200 m3 of kahikatea, or white pine, (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides) was imported from New Zealand. Australian hardwoods were deemed unsuitable because their natural tannins and oils tainted the butter.

But in 1920 the imported pine was switched to cheaper mountain ash (E. regnans) from the Otways once a way was found to reduce the taint using a neutral coating.

The new process enabled butter boxes to be manufactured for one shilling and nine pence each compared to two shillings for New Zealand boxes.

To source the mountain ash timber the Co-Op purchased three abandoned agricultural blocks totalling 400 ha in the head of the Aire River about 8 kms east of Beech Forest and built a sawmill. Conditions were harsh and a good day’s output, under manager Charles Brown, was around 10 m3.

The roads were impassable in winter, so the company also built its own timber tramline through the bush for 3 kms to the Olangolah Road and then along the road for further 3 kms to make a connection with an earlier built tramway which joined onto the railhead at Beech Forest.

The remote box mill worked until 1926 when the bush was cut-out and the area abandoned.

The Warrnambool factory then turned to other suppliers of timber. This move kept the plant going for several more years until a fire in 1936 which damaged part of the works. The company then closed the factory and moved its operations to Melbourne.

The McGennan factory had burnt down in 1923.

The story of the Warrnambool box factory by Norm Houghton. https://www.foresthistory.org.au/newsletter/afhsnewsletter78.pdf