The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association
| The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory | |
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Main building, 2014
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| Location | 57 Brook Street, North Toowoomba, Toowoomba, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia |
| Coordinates | 27°32′51″S 151°56′59″E / 27.5476°S 151.9498°ECoordinates: 27°32′51″S 151°56′59″E / 27.5476°S 151.9498°E |
| Official name: The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory (former), Dairy Farmers Factory | |
| Type | state heritage (built) |
| Designated | 18 April 2008 |
| Reference no. | 602596 |
| Significant period | 1920s |
 Location of The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory in Queensland
The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory (Australia)
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The Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory is a heritage-listed factory at 57 Brook Street, North Toowoomba, Toowoomba, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia. It is also known as Dairy Farmers Factory. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 18 April 2008.
The former Downs Co-operative Dairy Association Limited Factory, located on Brook Street, Toowoomba, is associated closely with the development of the Queensland dairy industry and with the emergence of the Darling Downs as a principal dairy producing region during the early to mid-twentieth century. The original butter factory, made of timber, was constructed in 1905. This was rebuilt in 1929 in brick and concrete, and extended at a later date. As the importance of dairying to Queensland expanded during the 1930s and 1940s, additional structures were erected on the site, including an administration building (early 1930s), laboratory (1936), an engine and refrigeration building (c.1930s), generator, sub-station, and boiler room (all c.1930s), and a milk and cheese processing factory (late 1930s-early 1940s). Further additions, extensions and renovations were undertaken post-1940s.
By the 1890s the Queensland Government had identified the expansion of agriculture, especially dairying, as a key means of encouraging closer settlement and boosting the Queensland economy. The expansion of dairying as a commercial activity was made possible by a number of advances in technology in the late nineteenth century, including the availability of refrigerated shipping in Queensland from 1883; the introduction of mechanical cream separators to Queensland in the late 1880s (invented in Europe in 1878); and the development of the Babcock butterfat test. Queensland Government intervention to encourage commercial dairying took a variety of forms. In the late 1880s and early 1890s the Queensland Department of Agriculture established Travelling Dairies that toured Queensland via the railway network, demonstrating and promoting techniques and equipment to potential dairy farmers and butter and cheese producers. Government grading of butter was introduced, and a series of Meat and Dairy Produce Acts between 1893 and 1904 facilitated the establishment of co-operative butter and cheese factories. Between 1894 and 1919 land repurchased from pastoralists under the provisions of the 1894 Agricultural Lands Purchase Act was resurveyed as agricultural selections, and closer settlement legislation between 1906 and 1917 assisted in the creation of small agricultural service towns. Heavy government expenditure on railway construction in the first two decades of the twentieth century was a significant catalyst for the expansion of dairying, extending the Queensland railway network from 3,500 kilometres in 1890 to 6,300 kilometres by 1910 and to 9,300 kilometres by 1920. Between 1910 and 1920, most new railway construction was of branch lines for agriculture.
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