Australian Cultural Library

The Australian Cultural Library is a reference-only library and arts organisation that collects, preserves, makes accessible and promotes items relating to Australian arts and culture. It holds over 100,000 items of artefacts and books about music, film, visual arts, literature, history, humanities, arts education and more: from the well-known to the rate and obscure.

The Australian Cultural Library is 100% volunteer-run and independent with all items donated by individuals, institutions, businesses or other non-profits. 

The house that sits at the front of the property was originally a bakery shop with an awning out the front that has since been removed. Towards the back of the property today is a large shed housing the Australian Cultural Library collection. Prior to that, it was an upholstery business built on the site of the old bakery. The house has been extensively renovated and now contains shelving and display area, and dedicated rooms and collections.

A bakery operated here in the 1930s and passed through many owners until it was sold in 1968. The bakery had two ovens, a larger one and a smaller one, both wood fired with the fireboxes located beside each oven. The oven was a beehive shaped brick structure with a domed roof and brick floor. A metal door sat in front of each oven. Bags of flour were stored in a storage area behind the smaller oven. The flours used were Defiance brand from Toowoomba and Seafoam from Brisbane. The larger oven could bake 380 loaves at a time and the smaller oven around 200. The loaves were put into the oven using a large wooden paddle called a peel.

In the 1950’s, the bakery produced fresh bread five days a week with Saturday the only full day off. They baked 400 loaves a day. They mainly made white bread along with Cerevite, which was similar to wholemeal bread today. They also made brown bread and a small number of malt loaves. They also produced married loaves which could be broken in half by hand as well as half loaves, pies, apple slices, lamingtons, sausage rolls, buns and cream buns.

Loaves were carried from the bakery to the shop in big wooden boxes each containing nine loaves. It was sliced with a bread slicing machine as required and wrapped in white tissue paper. Later, the wrappers used were a waxed paper sealed by a heat machine.