Milking Time Mural
The Story Behind This Mural
For eighty years, this building locally known as ‘The Butter Factory’ provided an essential service to Maryborough surrounds. The allotment was purchased by the Maryborough Co-Operative Dairy Association Ltd in 1901, a factory was built and production began in that year. In the early days, there were no milking machines on farms and farmers would be up before dawn to hand milk the cows in the paddocks. Cream and milk was loaded onto trucks in large cream cans and driven to the factory. Once there, it was processed into milk, cream, AAAA butter and cheese – the latter was wrapped in brown paper. The factory also sold ice for ice chests. During World War II, the factory exported cheese and butter to London. For decades milkmen would deliver milk and customers would go out to the milk truck with their glass jugs and have them filled from the tap on the tank.
By the 1970’s and 1980’s milk was packaged in glass bottles with foil caps – households would leave their money and used bottles for the milkman to exchange. On 1 January 1989 Suncoast Milk took over the Maryborough Co-operative Dairy Association assets and the factory was closed later that year and sold in 1990. It was resold to St Vincent de Paul in 1997.
About the Artist
Artist Brian Tisdall has worked as a commercial artist since the early 1970’s. He is experienced in screen printing .airbrushing, custom painting, mural design, watercolour and mosaic work. He has won prizes throughout Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory including the g Public Art with Theatre Of Life Artistry at Gympie Muster, the Acquisition Award at the Northern Territory Parliament House and the first prize for pavement art, at the Australian Body Art Festival 2011. Brian has his own airbrush business, Brianart, and teaches Master Art Classes around the Sunshine Coast.
Contributors to this Mural
The Maryborough Mural Project relies entirely on the generosity of volunteers and sponsors from our local community. The artist’s commission was generously sponsored by Councillor James Hansen’s Discretionary Funds. The Committee would like to thank Mrs Jan Carlson, Ms Tracey Christoffel, Mr Mal Finlayson, Ms Tracey Gray, Ms Bronwyn Mendoza, Mrs Dawn Vanderwolf, Mr Rai Whitten and Mr Mark Williams for their time and expertise in coordinating this mural. We would also like to thank the St Vincent de Paul Society of Maryborough and the following businesses for their kind and generous sponsorship of this mural:
Our featured sponsor is Earles Paint Place, Maryborough who have generously supported the Maryborough Mural Project since it’s inception and who have provided most of the paint and paint supplies needed to complete our murals. Without their generous and passionate support of the Project we would not have been able to achieve what we have to date. Earles continue to support and sponsor the project as a major contributor in helping to revitalise Maryborough through Art.