Brownies' Bedsteads
The Brown family mattress factory known as Brownies' Bedsteads was located at 43 Australia St in the 1930s. The building's name is Lotus House. Fifteen years ago it was owned by the ex-mayor of Marrickville Barry Jones. Bailey McBride moved in there after the Browns, and today the Nurses' Association is located there. (Source: Kersten Marin (516 2852), a young woman who now lives in Australia St herself (No.249) - this was her grandmother's family's business.)

Fowler's Potteries
Enoch Fowler (1807-79) and his wife Jane appear to have arrived in Sydney from Tyrone, Ireland, in 1836, establishing a small pottery on Parramatta Street, now Broadway. The pottery moved to Glebe in 1848: first to Queen Street and then to Bay Street. By the late 1850's it had moved to a five acre (2 ha.) site at Camperdown. Shortly after Enoch's death, his son Robert, who was living behind the brickpits in Ross Street Camperdown, built a grander house, Cranbrook (link to Cranbrook in House by House), at 14 Australia Street Camperdown. The two-storey villa included a bathroom (added in the 1890's), gardens, ferneries and an orchard (site now the Camperdown Oval/park). He died at Cranbrook on 12 July 1906 and was buried at Waverly Cemetery. (Source: Richard Cashman & Chrys Meader: Marrickville: Rural Outpost to Inner City )

AGL Camperdown
Australian Gas Light (AGL) occupies half of a building constructed in 1921 for Garrats Ltd, a firm of motor body builders and motor engineers previously located in Elizabeth Street Sydney. The site - bounded by Parramatta Road, Australia, Denison and Derby Streets - has been home to many motor vehicle companies and in the late 20's the Larke companies introduced the American concept of the used car lot to the Parramatta Road section of the block.

The building is sited on grants given to Thomas Rowley and Governor William Bligh in the early nineteenth century when most of Camperdown was a rural district occupied by gentlemen's country estates. In 1831 parts of these were consolidated into one property known as Kingston Farm. By mid-century Camperdown had developed into a suburb, Kingston Farm being sub-divided into 770 allotments in 1861. Most of the land where AGL now stands was purchased by Enoch Fowler, founder of Fowler's earthenware. AGL initiated its lease of 35-41 Australia Street Camperdown in 1934 as part of the post-Depression modernisation. It purchased the premises on 3 December 1948 after the property had been subdivided into two sections - one owned by motor vehicle retailers Larke Neave Hoskins and the other owned and occupied by AGL.

All AGL gas was manufactured at Mortlake and the administration was located in Haymarket. The Camperdown site represented the compromise of a relatively inexpensive rental close to the largely city-based prospective customers of the services to be provided from Camperdown. Harold Tindale, General Manager from 1932, saw the broadening of the sales base and the application of scientific principles as vital to AGL's efforts to trade their way out of the Depression and perform competitively against electricity.

AGL Camperdown was acquired to house the Physical Testing Division initially run by J.E. Logan who was transferred from the old lab on the top floor of the Engineers Offices at Haymarket. It was also used to centralise appliance stores, provide meter and fittings stores for the Distribution Division, house the Industrial Gas Demonstration Room and Workshops, accomodate the Production Design Office and establish the Gas Utilisation Laboratory.

It was in the 1930's that specifications designed to ensure safety, efficiency and durability were set for appliances and the Camperdown labs awarded an'approval badge' to those which met the requirements. Tests undertaken at Camperdown in the mid-thirties included the conversion procedures developed for blue ray gas, the first bottled gas sold in Australia. The laboratories at Camperdown were initially a showplace and received visitors from schools, technical colleges and Sydney University in addition to personnel from other industry laboratories.

A photographer and dark room (Editor's note: Sexually explicit photographs reportedly were produced in the dark room at one time by one of the workers who ran it as a side business ) were attached to the Physical Testing Division together with a black and white artist who prepared sketches of appliances for the codes of practice and identification manuals. Home Service Supervisors, including such famous cooks as Jean Bowering, Claire Davis and Margaret Fulton, conducted cooking tests for appliance approval in Camperdown's test kitchen.

During the war the Camperdown laboratories became the central co-ordinating Annexe of a group of Ministry of Munitions establishments strategically scattered throughout Sydney. To prevent possible dislocation of the gas supply, key sections of AGL were relocated and several clerical sections being moved to Camperdown. The building also housed an air raid shelter and a control centre where staff worked twleve hour shifts throughout the war. (Source: Laurie Cokin's '91 history of AGL during the war years)