Painting Mungo Scott Flour Mills, Summer Hill Part 2

Today's painting on the easel of my deck gallery is from 2009 and is of the last flour truck to depart the Mungo Scott Flour Mills in Summer Hill.

SU9 Summer Hill, Mungo Scott Flour Mills Last Flour truck .
2009 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
Available for sale
This vast behemoth was the last operational flour mill in Sydney.
Mungo Scott Ltd acquired the land for £3000 in 1916 and built the flour mill with an estimated £10,000 budget in 1921-22.

SU3 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Late Afternoon
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
It exploited the newly built Metropolitan goods line between Wardell Road and Darling Harbour.
The Summer Hill freight line, alongside Hawthorne Canal, was used twice a week to service the Mills. This branch line was the last operational section of the once mighty Metropolitan goods line before it was redeveloped as light rail/cycling track.

SU2 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Evening
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
A huge fire in the mill in 1927 was believed to have been caused by sparks caused by passing trains igniting stored flour.
The landmark silos appeared in the early 1950s, as Goodman Fielder grew the Mill’s capacity. Allied Mills took control of the buildings in the 1950s and they were used as a key processing facility for wheat grown in New South Wales until 2009.
The last train ran to the Mungo Scott flour mill on 1 December 2008.

SU1 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills by Night
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
As the Mungo Scott Flour Mills were conveniently close to the Taylor galleries in Smith street where I held regular exhibitions, I was well placed to be able to paint canvases of some of its last operations, including some of the last flour trucks to leave the Mills. 

Allied Mills finally vacated the site forever in about 2010 and moved their operations to a huge site in Picton, in Sydney's south-west, which I drive past whenever I exhibit my paintings at the Thirlmere Festival of Steam.

SU6 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Last Flour truck
2009 oil on canvas 41 x 61cm
PRIVATE COLLECTION : SYDNEY
Enquiries about other Summer Hill paintings

The precinct is now redeveloped and is home to offices and more than 400 apartments.

Related Posts

Painting from the silos of the Mungo Scott Flour Mills

The empty mask - Edwin Davey Flour Mills

Painting from the silos of Mungo Scott Flour Mills, Summer Hill

Today's painting on the easel of my 'deck gallery' is a view of and from the silos of Summer Hill’s famous Mungo Scott flour mill. This vast behemoth was an icon of Sydney’s inner west skyline for nearly 100 years.
It also evokes memories of a gallery where I used to exhibit between 2003 - 10.
From the early 1990s I used to exhibit in the Delmar Gallery in Summer Hill. When the Director, Max Taylor, left to establish his own gallery, the Taylor Galleries, I exhibited there from 2003 until its closure in 2010. The Mungo Scott flour mill was just a few doors down from the Taylor Galleries in Smith Street, Summer Hill. I was utterly fascinated with it and often painted views of it from the surrounding streets before or after delivering or collecting paintings.

SU12 Mungo Scott Flour Mills Night from the top of the silo
2007 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm 

 Available for sale
One day in 2004 I finally plucked up the courage to ask to be allowed to paint there. They couldn't have been kinder!
I was given the 'grand tour' of the Escher like maze of criss-crossing, zig-zagging walkways from the main building to the top of the silos. When I returned to paint there, everyone helped carry my easel and wet canvases.
Just as well, as while I was certainly strong enough, I would have been hopelessly lost getting from one building to another. It was so confusing navigating the various levels, and it was complicated by the fact that it was still an operational flour mill.
My guide wore a 'Gumby' style hairnet, goggles and gloves. He joked that people knew whether or not they were gluten intolerant within the hour.
Apparently I am - I was sneezing, wheezing & itching, and had to wear a mask whenever I painted there as I had trouble breathing. I've never really liked bread, and now I know why!

SU8 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Panorama
2004 ink acrylic pastel on paper 118 x 118cm 

 Available for sale
The silos were truly scary, especially at night. They were very high up, sloped & some didn't even have guardrails. When I was drawing and painting my huge panoramas of the unforgettable view of the inner west from the top of the silos, I was frankly terrified as I had unfortunately picked the highest silo, and for extra points it didn't have a guardrail.

SU7 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Panorama
2004 oil painting on canvas 91 x 122cm 

Enquiries about other Summer Hill paintings 
The spectacular view made up for the danger. The Summer Hill freight line carving its way through the inner west was directly beneath me.
Soon it would be literally re-cycled. Some of it would be reserved for light rail, and some would be a cycling track.
I was lucky to get to the Mungo Scott Flour Mills in time. Summer Hill was fast being engulfed by the tide of gentrification transforming former gritty industrial zones into hip neighbourhoods, driving up rents and pushing artists even further away from the inner city.

Related Posts

My page of Urban Landscape paintings

The Empty mask

The empty mask- Edwin Davey and Sons Flour Mill, Pyrmont

Built in 1896, the Edwin Davey and Sons Flour Mill was the last and one of the longest operating flour mills operating in inner Sydney.
The main building was a 4 storey brick flour mill in the utilitarian Federation Free Classical architectural style, with rectangular window openings and a corrugated iron roof behind a plain parapet.
The north facade had a large triangular pediment bearing the business name "Edwin Davey and Sons". On the western side, an extension built out to the cliff line. There was a rail siding from the old Metropolitan Goods Line on the northern side, below the escarpment with some remaining wheat elevation gear and corrugated iron clad extensions at the back of the mill.
By the time of these paintings from the early 2000s, the interior had long been gutted of any machinery and there are obvious horizontal bands of bracing girdling the exterior facade and keeping its last few bricks from falling onto the cars below.

P263A 'Edwin Davey Flour Mill'
2012 oil on board 26 x 38cm
Available
Until the 1860s the Ultimo end of the Pyrmont peninsula was still an undeveloped grazing property owned by Surgeon John Harris and his heirs.
In 1895, 10 lots of Block 42 of the Harris Estate was bought by Freeman and Sons, producers of a large range of household goods, who built a flour mill on the site.
In 1900 Edwin Davey, who already owned mills in South Australia, bought the Ultimo Roller Mills, to produce flour for export, as freight costs from Sydney were better than in Adelaide.

P100 Demolition of the Fielder Gillespie Flour Mills 2
1992 oil on paper 75 x 100cm
Available
The Ultimo Mill went into production in 1901 under the name Chanticleer Flour and operated until 1992, when it became part of Weston Milling Ltd. As the Ultimo mill was small and old fashioned, it was closed, gutted and sold for development.
By coincidence, about the same time, over the opposite side of Pyrmont Peninsula, Fielder Gillespie Flour Mills, next to the Pyrmont Power Station, was also being demolished. After a few weeks the Fielder Gillespie site was completely cleared and remained empty space until eventual redevelopment as a Woolworths and various other shops and offices. By contrast, the ghostly skeleton of the Edwin Davey and Sons building haunted the western edge of Pyrmont for a generation.


P263 'Edwin Davey Flour Mill'
2012 oil on paper 13 x 23cm
Available
By 2001 the building had been reduced to a wafer thin shell of bricks propped up in front of a weedy wasteland.
My painting above shows the interior of the facade, criss-crossed with bracing and scribbled over with cryptic graffiti.

The empty mask formerly known as the Edwin Davey and Sons flour mill was for almost 30 years a landmark for anyone driving to or from Pyrmont over the Anzac Bridge.It was demolished and replaced by an apartment block, with a small shed cantilevered on the western facade.

It lights up at night in a token gesture to the former building's existence.

Related posts

Painting Pyrmont - Sydney Living Museums

Wrong side of the tracks - Darling Island Bond and Free

Black cat of Union Square

Looking over the overlooked

We like sheep

Pyrmont sandstone - The lizards of Oz

To the Point