Summary

Black and white sepia toned photograph of the Kodak Australasia factory in Abbotsford, Victoria, 1911-1920.

This photograph features the 1886 Austral Laboratory building which curves around Southampton Crescent in Abbotsford, on the Kodak factory site. Three vehicles and their drivers, including a Kodak delivery van, are in front of the building. This building was originally part of the Austral Plate Company factory site which Thomas Baker, a pharmaceutical chemist, established on his residential property, Yarra Grange, in 1884. This building was used to manufacture photographic plates.

The Austral Plate company became known as 'Baker and Rouse' in 1894 and was owned by Thomas Baker and his business partner, accountant John Rouse. In the first decade of the 20th century, the company and factory site were purchased and operated by Kodak Australasia Pty Ltd. In the late 1950s Kodak moved from Abbotsford to a new factory site at Coburg on the northern outskirts of Melbourne.

Kodak manufactured and distributed a wide range of photographic products to Australasia, such as film, paper, chemicals, cameras and miscellaneous equipment. Its client base included amateur and professional photographers, as well as specialist medical and graphic art professionals who used photography, x-ray and other imaging techniques.

This photograph is part of the Kodak collection of products, promotional materials, photographs and working life artefacts collected from Kodak Australasia in 2005, when the Melbourne manufacturing plant at Coburg closed down.

Description of Content

Exterior of a factory site. The view looks across at a three storey building from a road which is perpendicular to the building. Another road is parallel with the front of the building. Four of the five sections of this multi-storey brick building are visible in this photograph, as well as the side of the building at far right. In front of the building there is a Kodak delivery truck at left with a man standing in front, a car in the middle and a truck at right with a man standing in front, all parked on the road. A gas street lamp is on the corner of the two roads, and bluestone guttering lines the road in the foreground. A footpath is visible on the left, on the edge of a vacant block opposite the factory building.

Physical Description

Black and white sepia toned photograph, printed on medium weight paper, landscape format with a sepia toned border.

More Information