An Aussie icon ripped away to make room for more Asians

[Tina Greco - Melbourne]

Time, gentlemen, please: closing time at the old Kent brewery

By Philip Cornford and Geesche Jacobsen
April 15 2003

For 169 years, the aroma of hops boiling and barley roasting wafted over the Kent Brewery on Broadway - a smell sweet and moist, suggestive of the dark and cool bars in which the beer is sold.

All too soon, this sensation will be but a memory and Stephen "Speedy" Walmsley, an employee for 27 years, hopes he will be the man allowed to turn out the lights on the huge Carlton & United Breweries building when it closes in early-2005 to make way for a residential development.

It will be the second time Mr Walmsley, 45, has closed down a brewery. An electrician, he turned off the power when Resch's shut down in 1983.

"It was spooky," he recalled. "That huge place - empty, dark, all the people gone."

Now the Kent Brewery will suffer a similar fate.

Mr Walmsley is one of more than 300 workers, most of them long-term, who will lose their jobs after CUB announced the closure yesterday, describing the Chippendale site as a "large island of industry stranded in Sydney's central residential revival".

Built on Blackwattle Creek in 1835, the original Tooth and Co produced many beers, of which only one remains on the market - KB lager, the smallest production-run today.

After the mid-20th century, other companies and their beers moved in: Resch's Pilsener and Dinner Ale; and Victoria Bitter, Fosters, Cascade Light and Stirling Light, after CUB took over in 1983.

Under Tooth & Co, the employees didn't only brew the beer, they drank it four times a day - a ration of a schooner of beer at morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and when they clocked off. That arrangement ended with CUB.

"We're like family - we all know each other,"said Keith Crowfoot, 39, who started at the brewery as an apprentice draughtsman 23 years ago. "We all wear the same uniform, including the general manager. I call him Dave [Grant]. He's not a happy man today either."

Mr Walmsley and Mr Crowfoot believe they know the brewery - sprawling over 5.4hectares, some building five stories high - better than anyone else. "I know every powerpoint," Mr Walmsley said. "I know ever pipe," Mr Crowfoot said.

The factory is hardly a cheery place, but they were happy there. Both would have liked to stay until retirement age.

With the exception of a heritage chimney and gate, it will all go to make way for residential development. The property is valued at $150million.

The Lord Mayor, Lucy Turnbull, said: "The site presents a unique opportunity to unlock a missing link in the city's fringe - an opportunity not seen in over a century."

But at the Clare Hotel, next door, the smell of hops and barley wafting, brewery workers about to lose their jobs greeted such words with scorn. As long as they can remember, they've been going to the Clare after work.

"I've drunk VB all my adult life," said Al Martins, 39, an employee for nine years.

"But when I walk out that gate the last time, that's the end for me for any bloody CUB beer."

They were all loyal men. They all drank the beer they brewed. But no more.

"Yeah," they chorused.