Old Cheese Factory (Berwick)
Featuring the 1860s historic Springfield Homestead, the Old Cheese Factory allows visitors to step back in time and explore a reminder of Australia's early colonial history.
There are heritage buildings (Springfield Homestead, Cheese Factory and Kitchen Wash House), beautiful gardens, an excellent https://www.melbourneplaygrounds.com.au/the-old-cheese-factory-playground-homestead-road-berwick and picnic facilities. Look closely and you might even find a surprise or two hidden among the gardens.
This land has been sustaining its people for over 40,000 years. The Bunurong people have lived here for generations, performing ceremonies and traversing the grassy plains and Red Gum and Ti-tree bushlands. It has provided all they have needed, from wild mushrooms to eels, kangaroos, freshwater mussels and crayfish.
European settlers came in the 1830s, first claiming large pastoral estates and then smaller farm properties. It was prime grazing land that perfectly suited the dairies that emerged in the 1860s. Milk from the dairies was sent to Melbourne or turned into butter and cheese, as it was here at the Old Cheese Factory.
From the 1850s to the 1880s this place was known as 'The Springs'. Built by wealthy landowner and farmer Sir William John Clarke, it was a working farm with a cheese factory, dairy farm and homestead.
William John Turner 'Big' Clarke bought 'The Springs' estate in around 1855. Clarke was a wealthy landowner who had made his fortune in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and Victoria's Sunbury and Mornington Peninsula regions. Although 'Big' Clarke probably never set foot here, his son, Sir William Clarke, inherited the property.
Like many Berwick farms, 'The Springs' was a working dairy by the time the cheese factory was built in 1875. Murdoch McDonald had the latest equipment at his disposal. This included a three-horse-power boiler, 300-pound copper cheese tub, churn and double cheese presses. However, the equipment had its problems. In 1882, The South Bourke and Mornington Journal reported that 'the whole of his household were terribly frightened on hearing a terrific explosion, and on going to where the boiler was supposed to be, found it had been blown from its bed to a distance of at least one hundred and fifty yards. Luckily no-one was injured.
If you'd ridden your horse along Homestead Road in the 1880s, you'd have heard the steady rumble of machinery, the high-pitched whistle of a boiler and the bellowing of around 200 Ayrshire cattle grazing nearby.
The cheese factory produced up to 150 wheels of cheese a week under the watchful eye of master cheesemaker Murdoch McDonald. They were carted to Melbourne and exported to places as far away as Queensland!
The cheese factory was a model of technological innovation. Cheesemaking is ideally done in controlled conditions. Cheese here was made on the cooler lower level of the factory and stored on the top level. There was a gap for cooling built into the factory's double-brick walls and the roof had a cavity between the wooden shingles and corrugated iron top layer.
Cheesemaker Murdoch McDonald worked in the factory from 1875, running its state-of-the-art cheesemaking machines and overseeing production of 150 cheeses per week. He was kept busy supervising 12 workers and the milking of 200 cows every day but seemed 'to take a great delight in his work'. After McDonald's lease ended in 1888, he put the boiler, copper cheese tub, cheese presses and churn up for sale and left. Sadly, the building was never again used to make cheese or butter.
Charles Hatten, his wife Elsie and sons Bruce and Neville came to live at this homestead in 1936. As a returned soldier, Charles was able to !ease the land for farming through the Victorian Soldier Settlement Scheme. A member of the 8th Australian Light Horse Regiment, he survived two disastrous attacks on The Nek at Gallipoli on 7 August 1915 in his first deployment. Charles served from 1914-18 and had reached the rank of lieutenant before he was discharged due to being medically unfit.
The family moved into a newly-painted house with a potato crop that had been planted right up to the front door! Elsie set up the beautiful garden and Charles, while not well enough to run the farm himself sub-leased the farm and kept a very successful vegetable garden.
Sadly, the family never had a use for the Old Cheese Factory. However. Neville, who was 9 years old when his family moved there, thought it was the perfect place to race his train set!
Although the chapel is one of the most recent additions to the Old Cheese Factory estate, it is over 60 year old and has been moved, twice!
John Sale, one of the founding members of St Luke's Uniting Church, recalls that Episcopal preacher Mr Thompson built the chapel at Surrey Road, Mount Waverley, in 1958 but never managed to attract a congregation. St Luke's Presbyterian Church bought the property the following year. In 1960, a growing congregation saw the chapel moved 450 metres to new premises in Essex Road, Mount Waverley.
By 1989, St Luke's uniting Church, as it was then known, had outgrown the small weatherboard building. The following year, the Victorian Ministry for the Arts help pay for its relocation from Mount Waverley to Berwick after the parishioners of St Luke's Uniting Church donated it to the City of Berwick for the princely sum of one dollar.
Location
64 Homestead Road, Berwick 3806 Map
✆ (03) 9709 9300
Email Enquiry
Web Links
→ www.casey.vic.gov.au/facilities-hire/old-cheese-factory
→ Old Cheese Factory on Facebook
