I wonder how many opportunities we lose when we forget what previous generations achieved together.
Twelve months ago, I set out to write the history of the Jamberoo dairy factory. I imagined a modest booklet, perhaps 50 pages, celebrating the farmers who established the cooperative in 1887 and the people who kept it operating for the next century.
Well, that was optimistic.
The manuscript has grown to more than 200 pages of research, photographs, newspaper reports, interviews and discoveries. Along the way, I’ve learned an extraordinary amount about the people and industries that made this region what it is today. I’ve also discovered how much misinformation can find its way into local history.
Dates are repeated until they become accepted facts. Names change, events become muddled, and accounts written decades later sometimes contradict contemporary newspaper reports. Even respected historical publications contain mistakes. I’ve spent countless hours comparing sources, tracing original records and talking with people who actually worked in the factories.
And the more I discover, the more astonished I become by how little of this history we celebrate.
From Wollongong to Nowra, dairy farmers established cooperatives, pioneered manufacturing technologies, created the recipe for spreadable butter, developed the Illawarra dairy breed and built businesses that supplied products across Australia and overseas. Their influence reached into agriculture, science, transport, employment, education and community life.
Yet where can a visitor discover this remarkable history?
We have Daisy, our magnificent fibreglass cow in Kiama, standing proudly as a monument to the dairy industry. Beyond her, there is remarkably little across the region that tells the wider story.
MOOving Art: how Daisy the Cow inspired a national dairy art phenomenon
I suspect readers of this booklet will be flabbergasted by the scale of the industry’s achievements and equally surprised by how little public recognition remains.
And there is another story emerging from my research, one that has considerable relevance today.
My conversations with cousins Geoff Boxsell and Russell Fredericks revealed how dairy cooperatives developed community leaders. Both became factory managers and successful sporting leaders. Their workplaces encouraged people to learn every part of the operation, understand different responsibilities and work together to solve problems. These skills travelled into football clubs, community organisations and boardrooms.
When regional industries disappear, we lose far more than jobs and economic activity. We also lose places where young people learn from experienced colleagues, develop confidence, take responsibility and discover their capacity to lead.
Today, we often talk about organisations working in silos, with departments disconnected from one another. Those old cooperatives offer some interesting lessons about what happens when people understand the whole business and recognise that everybody’s contribution counts.
There is a great deal to learn from a generation that understood the power of working together.
It helps us understand the decisions that brought us here, recognise the people whose contributions have been overlooked and consider what we might learn from their experiences.
And occasionally, it reminds us that a fibreglass cow has been doing an extraordinary amount of heavy lifting for an entire region’s industrial heritage.
It’s time Daisy had some company.
