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Janis Hanley - Historian
Ipswich as the centre of Queensland’s woollen textile industry is my inspiration of this small collection. The first factory, the Queensland Woollen Manufacturing Company (QWMC) opened on the Terrace at north Ipswich in 1877. The building is now owned by Council and is state heritage listed. The Ipswich Woollen company followed in 1910. It was a re-use of the Queensland Cotton Company buildings in Joyce Street, East Ipswich. John Morris was the driver, and manager, of the Ipswich Woollen Company and resided across the railway line from the mill. John Morris left the Ipswich woollen company to set up Morris Woollen Mills at Redbank in 1932. Shortly after his son Ivor Morris took over operations.
In 1968 Ipswich Woollen Company merged with QWMC, closing the East Ipswich Site. In 1971, the QWMC site also closed its doors. Morris Woollen Mills kept running and took on many of the workers from the other mills. However, the mill part was on-sold in the 1980s, with Morris retaining the Wool Scour. The woollen mill closed soon after, and Morris sold the wool scour in the late 1980s to Sun Rock a Japanese company. It closed its doors in 1994 – and Ipswich’s woollen textile industry was no more.
The land and the river
Panorama of Ipswich from Limestone Hill, taken by Pochee, North Ipswich, 1865
All our productions start with a place. This window into the past created by Poochee shows the riverside land, country of clans of the Yagara/Yugara language group. In 1865 the place was already denuded of trees, any Aboriginal inhabitants had been moved on from the area. The newly formed Queensland Woollen Manufacturing company purchased the land, in 1876. It was crown land, and the mill purchased it for a bargain. The directors fenced and adjusted cattle on it until it was time to build the factory. The river was the life blood of the factory – it carried the raw materials, provided water for steam to power the machines, and served as a dump for wastes, dyes and chemicals, transporting them through to Moreton bay. Poohcee’s image is so pristine.
When the river became a sea
Queensland Woollen Mills, during floods, North Ipswich, 1893
This the earliest image of the first woollen mill, Queensland Woollen Manufacturing company. The photograph startles me every time I look at it. The building was just three years old, the pride of Ipswich with its sawtooth roof and modern machinery. How long did it take the mill to recover? How much was lost? What smelly muddy woolly mess was there to clean up? But of course, once the river got to this height, up to the rafters of the factory, many, many homes in Ipswich were under water. The floods of 1993 were devastating.
A snowy mountain of wool
Workers sorting wool at the Ipswich Woollen Mills, Joyce Street, East Ipswich, 1950s
The first step in the processing of woollen textiles is scouring the raw wool, removing the wastes, vegetable matter, grease and dust from the raw wool. The picture appears to show the end of scouring the process where the wool is being dried after being washed. It is then sorted for manufacture. The courser wool from Queensland made blanket and flannels, the finer wools from Victoria and Tasmania were used for fine suiting and upholstery. Often the wool would be dyed at this point.
Back and forth with the spinning mules
Interior of Ipswich Woollen Company, Joyce street, East Ipswich, 1956
These spinning mules, are used to spin yarn for woollen products like blankets and flannels. The mules constantly move backwards and forwards along rails. The forwards movement draws out the wool, the backwards movement spins it, and winds it onto bobbins. The operators moved backwards and forwards with the mules, nimbly picking up broken threads and tying them together. They needed to be ever watchful. One former operator spoke of a mule running over her foot when she was fixing a break.
Warping – laying out the treads for the loom
Interior of the Ipswich Woollen Company, Joyce Street, East Ipswich, 1956
The optics of the warp mill fascinates me. On the mill, the warp threads, those running the length of the fabric are laid out for the loom. Hundreds of threads, t e numbers depending on the fineness of the yarn. For intricate patterns, meticulous counting out of different colours was required. The threads are pulled onto the warp mill as the large wheel turns, and then wound onto a smaller beam that can be carried to the loom and tied in.
Looming large
A Textile machine at the Ipswich Woollen Co, Joyce Street, East Ipswich, 1956
This is a commercial loom. The warp threads are individually tied on at the back and pulled through the loom. To weave the textile, the shuttles, holding the weft, are pushed at high speed though the warp threads. The shuttle/colour is selected by a chain that holds the repeat pattern. Sometimes the shuttles would dislodge and fly off – a hazard for anyone nearby. The operators watch closely for broken threads, quickly grabbing them and neatly tying them together so the menders coming after them had an easier job. From here the textiles are mended, washed, dried, and finished.
For most, the work was repetitive, and tedious. The conditions were often uncomfortable with temperatures and humidity kept high, for the wool to perform its best. Much of the work was hazardous, and early machines had no guards to stop fingers, hands, arms, bodies becoming entangled.
The Ipswich mills ran for 117 years and at its height employed 1500-2000 workers across three shifts. The mills were the largest employer of women in Ipswich and for a time Queensland. The workforce was mainly female, and until 1969 women were paid ¾ (or less) the wages of males doing the same work. The women were considered unskilled factory hands. Men were mainly the supervisors and certainly the management was all male.