Salisbury. Historical display of the World War Two Explosive Factory work at Penfield- Salisbury. In the Salisbury Library in the Hub. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Salisbury. Historical display of the World War Two Explosive Factory work at Penfield- Salisbury. In the Salisbury Library in the Hub. / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Weapons Research Establishment and WW2 explosives factory. Farmers took up surveyed land at Peachy Belt, later named Penfield in 1854. The pioneering families of Penfield were Argents, Andrews, Fatchen, Sturtons and same are remembered by Argent Road, Sturton Church and road, Andrews Farm near Smithfield etc. No town emerged but the district has a school, Bible Christian Methodist Church (Zoar), cemetery, general store etc. Sadly all these lands were acquired by the Commonwealth government for wartime use in 1940. The Department of Munitions took the land as Britain indicated that they would not be able to provide arms and ammunition to Australia for the Pacific and Asian war effort. The Department of Munitions was created one week after the retreat from Dunkirk by Britain. Australia had to be prepared. Work on of the Salisbury Explosives Factory (later Penfield) began in November 1940. Herbert Jory was the architect engaged by the Department of Munitions to design and manage the construction of the factory and offices. Up to 3,000 workmen were employed seven days a week so that the factory could be completed within a year. The complex eventually included 1,400 buildings including special structures for armament storage. The site was chosen away from the coast and away from the eastern states for security reasons. It was located next to the Gawler railway line which was also essential. Thus the Salisbury to Penfield railway opened in late 1941. There were three stations within the explosive works named station one, two and three where there was a turning loop. That loop is still visible from the air and that last station still stands albeit in ruins. To provide housing for workers closer to the explosives factory site 140 transportable fibro cabin homes were quickly erected in Salisbury. Trains also ran day and night for the workers who were primarily women. This was the largest explosives and ammunitions works in Australia. Finsbury works made shell cases, metal components etc. Only Penfield made the explosives and filled the explosives containers which were railed direct from Hendon ammunition works. By 1943 there were 3,000 workers at Penfield but this later rose to 6,000 people working over three shifts covering 24 hours. Ammunition was made and stored until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945. Not long after the War the Long Range Weapons Establishment was formed at Penfield to support the guided weapons facility at Woomera. Research was conducted as part of a consortium with Britain and later the United States of America into rockets, long range weapons and nuclear weapons hence the Maralinga nuclear tests of the 1950s. Some of the earliest computing in Australia occurred at WRE Penfield. The Weapons Research Establishment consisted of five sections or wings - the Weapons Research and Development Wing, the Applied Physics Wing, the Engineering Wing, the Trial Wing and the Administrative section. WRE did the work on the first Australian satellite in 1967 making us the third country in the world to launch satellites. In the 1970s these wings were changed to weapons research, electronics research, trials research and advanced engineering. By the mid-1960s employment levels at WRE reached the wartime levels of around 6,000 people. Special groups like British Aerospace had their own facilities here. This was an era when calculators could take up half a desk and computers were huge banks of machinery taking up entire rooms. By those decades many workers walked from Elizabeth Central railway station from trains coming from Adelaide, Angaston-Truro, Kaunda-Eudunda and Riverton. In 1971 there were still seven or eight trains a day to between Adelaide and Penfield One, Two and Three. The work of this relatively secret government facility was bolstered with the closure of the Mallala Air Force base and the establishment of the Edinburgh Royal Australian Air base and airport in 1954. Once the UK-Australian partnership ended and the Woomera rocket range was closed down the department of Defence Science and Technology Organisation continued to use the Penfield site for research and defence work. In 1997 the Department of Defence which controlled Penfield decided to rationalise the site. In 2015 it sold off about 70% of the site and retained the remainder for the government and renamed the department defence Science and Technology Group. The DSTG now has bilateral defence agreements and research work with USA, UK, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway and Singapore. Security checks were not needed for entry to the site and a new suburb named Edinburgh Park was created for commercial industry and warehousing. The old Penfield site still includes the Methodist Church at Sturton and the attached cemetery but there is no general access to that. Finsbury munitions works and later industries. Following the British retreat from Dunkirk in 1940 the Commonwealth government decided that munitionsproduction would be decentralised and located away from the eastern seaboard. Lithgow was one site and Finsbury/Hendon in Adelaide another site. The Finsbury munition factory was set up ready for production in February 1941 on a 50 hectare/123 acre site. It comprised twenty major buildings and many smaller ones that made the metal castings etc for munitions but no explosives. Around 4,000 people worked at Finsbury factory during world war Two. The metal castings and arms cases were railed to Penfield by the new spur line from Woodville to Finsbury and the other spur line from Albert Park into Hendon. As late as 1971 there were seven or eight trains a day from Adelaide to Finsbury. That railway station line closed in 1979 and is now the site occupied by Al Khalil Mosque and Islamic cemetery. Immediately after World War Two the Hendon and Finsbury works were closed and the buildings sold off to a range of industrial companies. The first company to take up the former ammunitions buildings was Vactric Electrical appliances which made vacuum cleaners and was later called Electrolux. They were eventually owned by Pope Industries which merged with Simpsons. Across at Hendon the first firm to take over the ammunitions works in 1946 was Philips Electrical Industries Australia which made many items from radios and transistor radios to televisions. Philips eventually took over much of the Finsbury site as well. Other companies at Finsbury made baths, refrigerators, car parts etc. Firestone Rubber Company was another early major occupier of the Finsbury site. Other companies at Finsbury included Chrysler (now gone), International Harvester, Kelvinator, Rubery Owen & Kemsley, Simpson Pope, Tecalemit and Texas Instruments. Some of these companies were still located here recently including - Clyde-Apac (air filtration systems), ROH Wheels Australia (no local production now a warehouse for imported tyres only) and Tecalemit Australasia (lubrication equipment). Tecalemit have recently moved to Cavan. The Commonwealth government kept the two storey red brick administration offices and some other buildings for use from 1946 for the Department of Supply’s Defence Research Laboratories which became the Materials Research Laboratories and finally the CSIRO. From the 1940s the government scientific laboratories here carried out metallurgical investigations, X-ray and radium examination of castings etc. and pyrometric calibrations and a general technical information service for industry and government. It closed in 2007 and was sold to Ngutu College. This suburb is now called Woodville North. |
| 撮影日 | 2022-04-10 11:04:30 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | SM-A505YN , samsung |
| 露出 | 0.02 sec (1/50) |
| 開放F値 | f/1.7 |