Steve Dare (L) Butter Maker Guru and his apprentice Russell Fredericks (R)
There is a wonderful moment captured in this photo, taken long before automation took over dairy factories. On the left is Steve Dare, Jamberoo’s master butter maker, a man who could read a churn the way others read a newspaper. Next to him is apprentice Russell Fredericks, paddles ready, learning the craft
You can see the strain in the stance, the weight of the paddles, the deliberate rhythm of easing butter onto the scissor-lift trolley. Even the trolley had to be wound up by hand, inch by inch. Strength, coordination, and care were all part of the job.
Russell went on with Geoff Boxsell to become one of the most influential figures driving change in the NSW dairy industry during the 1970s and 80s.
The local connection runs even deeper. Russell and Geoff Boxsell are cousins, born exactly twelve months apart on Independence Day, living next door to one another and growing up between the dairy factory and the paddocks. Two boys who could wander between houses without crossing a road, who later wandered into the same factory, and who would go on to influence decades of industry innovation.
Butter making was brutally physical. In the photos above Steve and Russell are unloading a full batch of butter from a giant drum churn. A single batch could weigh hundreds of kilograms, and every bit of it had to be coaxed out by hand. There were no hydraulic arms, no automated scrapers, just paddles, teamwork, and strength built over years.
Butter Paddles
Kevin Richardson later reflected that during peak summer production Jamberoo could be making around ten tonnes of butter a week. Because each block had to be handled multiple times before it reached the freezer, that meant the equivalent of forty tonnes of butter was being lifted, cut, shifted, and shaped by hand.
Winter and summer were two different jobs. In winter, the churn room could be bitterly cold. Butter came out hard and resistant, and cutting it with wooden paddles took enormous wrist strength.
In summer, the problem reversed. Butter softened quickly, so crews often started as early as three in the morning to get a second batch finished before heat made it too soft to handle. Timing was everything, and experience was the difference between success and failure.
Butter changed with temperature, movement, and time. If the churn ran a few minutes too long, the texture shifted. If the room warmed, the butter softened too quickly. The men working here relied on instinct developed over years: listening for the sound of the churn, reading texture by eye, adjusting with a few firm strokes of the paddles.
Factories like Jamberoo were producing butter that would go on to win national awards. That level of quality did not happen by accident. The spotless churn room, the white uniforms, the careful manual work all point to the same thing: this was skilled craft, not a simple production line.
Steve Dare was not only a butter maker, he was the master of the printing and wrapping process. Once a week, he would bring butter out of the freezer and carefully bring it back to the right working temperature. The printing machine was entirely manual, demanding patience and precision. Kevin often remarked that it was a pity there were no photographs of Steve at that machine, because it was one of the most skilled jobs in the factory, and Steve was exceptionally good at it.
This was the world in which Geoff Boxsell and Russell Fredericks learned their trade. It gave them a foundation of practical skill, problem solving, and respect for process that shaped the direction of dairy manufacturing across NSW.
And then, years later, came STUFF.
If Elon Musk had walked through the Jamberoo Co operative Dairy Factory in its working years, he would have been gobsmacked by the system.
In the next story, Kevin Richardson steps back from individual products and explains the thinking that sat underneath everything Jamberoo did. A production system where nothing useful was wasted, every by product had a purpose, and each decision was made with the whole picture in mind. Today we would call it a circular economy. Jamberoo was living it around fifty years before the language caught up.
This was not a single flash of brilliance. It was built by a group of practical innovators who understood milk, machinery, labour, and quality because they worked with them every day. Butter, condensed milk, skim powder, buttermilk, even the handling and washing of cans all formed part of one closed loop.
Kevin’s account shows how that system delivered premium product, held together under pressure, and quietly solved problems that much larger organisations struggled to manage.
The next story is about the system that made everything else possible, and the people who built it.
#Jamberoo #DairyHistory #CircularEconomy #AustralianManufacturing #ButterMakers #LocalInnovation #SkillsAndCraft #NothingWasted #FoodSystems #RegionalExcellence