SPOTSWOOD has lost a piece of industrial history with the demolition of the former Melbourne Glass Bottle Works, which featured in the first Mad Max film.
Only the basalt wall on Douglas Parade – referred to by the company’s glassworkers as The Great Wall of Spotswood – will be preserved.
The building, near Scienceworks in Booker Street, was deemed to be in such disrepair that it could not be saved.
But Museum Victoria’s senior curator, Matthew Churchward, said documenting the site would allow people to be “reconnected with Melbourne’s industrial history”.
He is keen to hear from anyone who worked at the site 15 or more years ago to be part of a project of collecting verbal histories.
Scienceworks manager Genevieve Fahey said a historian had been appointed to document the Glass Bottle Works history.
She said artefacts found on the site, such as the recently discovered wooden staved pipe, believed to date from the 1880s and possibly made in Footscray, would be preserved.
“The land was purchased by the Victorian government with a long-term view of arts and cultural use, but there are currently no confirmed plans for the future of the site,” Ms Fahey said.
The former glassworks was established in 1890 and originally made bottles for druggists Felton Grimwade before it was sold to the state government by US multinational, OI glass manufacturers.
Williamstown ward councillor Angela Altair said the building’s demolition was “probably a metaphor for what’s happening to manufacturing generally and in the western suburbs in particular”.
“We’ve presided over destruction of another old building, but just call me an old romantic,” she said at last week’s council meeting. Spotswood ward councillor Bill Tehan said it was “quite a sad demolition”, but the building had become a hazard.
Former workers can ring 0407096586.
