Dispatch rural photographed in 2011

photographed in 2011

fabric scraps and tools left where production stopped

debris and a rusted pipe cover the floor

Part of the BlueScope Port Kembla series

one of several timber-framed false-front facades built to replicate 1880s American main-street architecture

Dispatch rural photographed in 2011A single work boot sits on a dusty timber floor, left behind when the Northcote Shoe Factory closed sometime in the 1980s or 1990s. The factory, purpose built on Arthurton Road in 1926, produced footwear under the Purnell Shoe Company name by the 1970s, one of a wave of inner Melbourne manufacturers that didn't survive tariff reductions and cheap imports. Part of the Northcote Shoe Factory series.