Difference between revisions of "Lindsay's Chaff Mill"

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The following story has been written by Ken Lindsay.

Lindsay's Chaff Mill

My grandfather, George Weatherall Lindsay, owned the Mallala Chaff Mill which was situated at the western end of Railway Terrace, just prior to the entrance to the Railway yards.The whole property was quite extensive, and included quite a large area fronting Adelaide Road, on which haystacks were often built.This area has since been subdivided, and now contains several housing properties, including one built for Margaret (nee Baker) and me by Mr Charlie Baker, her father. The western boundary of the property was the Railway Yards.

The Chaff mill was probably built around 1900, and my recollection from information my dad, Gordon Lindsay had told me, is that G. W. Lindsay purchased the chaff mill business from a Mr Curnow. It is possible that this gentleman was Mr John L. Curnow, father of Wilf, and I think the transfer may have taken place around 1920.

Grandpa Lindsay operated the business as G.W. Lindsay and Sons, and I believe that several of his six sons were involved at some stage. However, by the early to mid 1930’s, when I first came on the scene, I can recall only two –Bob (later became S.A. Farmers Union agent – wheat buying operation) and Gordon. I can remember Uncle Bob, who was a sheaf tosser, practising by tossing the “sheaves”over the chaff mill, and it was my job at the age of 7 or 8 to run around and lug them back!. Dad told me stories of the early days of the Mill, when the hay was carted in from local farms by horse-drawn trolleys, either placed straight into the mill for imminent cutting into chaff, or built into stacks on the area mentioned earlier. When the stacks were built, Dad took great pride in them, and the attached photo shows a big stack built probably in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s.

Good quality chaff was in high demand in those days, and the mill specialized in oaten hay chaff which was carted to Adelaide by horse teams and used for racehorses. Such a trip took three days, with an overnight stop on the way in at Virginia, and also on the way back, usually with an empty trolley.

I believe at its peak of operations, the mill employed ten men. The use of draught horses made it a very labour intensive business, and meant very early starts in the morning to feed the teams, and get them harnessed and ready to go to work. Grandpa’s eldest son, Bill, was one of the teamsters at this time. He eventually left the mill and joined two other brothers, Arthur and Perce, in the Police Force in Adelaide.

In 1935, the business bought a Diamond T Truck, fitted with a 16 foot tray specially for hay carting. This was Dad’s pride and joy and was a beautiful vehicle. One of our family stories was that, when I was four, Mum would send me over to the mill, across the railway tracks, with Dad’s morning lunch, which consisted of sandwiches, cake and a Woodroofe’s screw top bottle of black tea. On one occasion, I went missing, and Dad rang Mum, only to be told that she had sent me over some time ago. A quick search found me sitting in the cabin of the Diamond T eating Dad’s lunch.

By the late 1930’s, Grandpa Lindsay had handed over the Mill to my dad, Gordon, and the work force had reduced to about 5 or 6. The only workmen I can recall were dad’s brother in law, Frank Jenkins, Bill Tiller, who lived in a small cottage on the corner of Railway Terrace and Lindsay Street, and Cyril (Snowy) Hall. During my school years, I would get over to the Mill at every opportunity, and loved going with Dad to either cart hay in or deliver chaff to Adelaide. Our Adelaide destination was Norm Filsell’s establishment, in the East End Market area, Rundle Street.

After finishing school, and a brief career in the Commercial Bank, I came home to work with Dad in 1952. The old Diamond T truck had been replaced by a Ford, which although quite “tinny” by comparison, still performed very well over about 20 years. I was the bagger man in the operation of the chaff mill, the bagging equipment being located upstairs on a loft. There were two bagging chutes, and the procedure was to take the filled bag off, stand it on a set of scales, weigh it at 70 pounds, stand it aside for later sewing up, put an empty bag on the chute, and start again with the bag on the second chute which had been filling. Dad was the chaff cutter operator, while the workmen fed the sheaves down to him, grain end first , to be fed into the cutter. A conveyor took the chaff laterally to an elevator which put it into the bagging hopper on the loft. The whole operation was powered by a massive single cylinder Crossley oil engine, which had a 7 foot diameter fly wheel, and was started by compressed air, and cooled from a tank of water on a stand outside the engine room. A system of belts, shafts and pulleys connected the cutter, the elevator and the bagger plant. An interesting aside to the cutting operation was that the hay had to be watered down the night before This was done by climbing a ladder from the loft up into the roof timbers of the mill, and using a hose with a jet nozzle. Only the butt end of the sheaves was watered, and by the time cutting was done the following morning, the hay had toughened up, and thus the chaff cut cleaner and was better quality. After every cutting operation Dad would unbolt the four crescent shaped knives from the cutter wheel, and sharpen them on a specially made swiveling frame and grindstone.

By the mid to late 1950’s, the chaff mill operations were scaling down, and sometimes it was only necessary to cut chaff once or twice a week. Other aspects of the business of G.W.Lindsay and Sons were increasing, eg, the Mobil fuel agency, bagged and later bulk grain carting, baled hay carting to the Gepps Cross Abattoirs, sawing of wood and delivery around Mallala etc. Our main outlet for chaff changed from Adelaide to various railway stations north.

The attached photo of the mill, with Gordon beside the Diamond T truck, was taken by my sister Heather mid 1940’s on a Kodak “Brownie” box camera which I’d given her for her birthday. It shows the battered state of the iron on the side of the mill caused by countless loads of hay brushing against it. The large opening was usually only temporary, when it was decided to have a cleanout of years of accumulated bits of hay, or after a particularly bad mouse plague.

I left the Mill in 1959, when I joined Don Pitt in the Mallala Council Office, and Dad continued the general agency/carrying business for some years. As far as I can recall, the chaff mill operation closed at about this same time. However, the mill remained standing until around 1970, when it was demolished, and sold for salvage. The massive roof timbers were well seasoned by then! The Crossley Oil engine was purchased by Mr Bill Hancock, taken down to his property at Reedy Creek, and used for many years to pump water from a bore for irrigation purposes. Rodney Hancock has told me that they gave up starting it with compressed air – they simply wound a rope around the pulley attached to the main flywheel shaft, hooked it up to a vehicle’s tow bar, and drove away. The engine would start readily on kerosene, and then they would switch over to sump oil. Although it has not been in use for many years, the engine still exists on the Hancock property, and has been a source of interest to a few people interested in restoring old stationary engines."

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• Ken Lindsay