The Toowoomba Maltings, located on Mort Road, Newtown, comprises bluestone rubble kilns erected in 1899 and a two storey brick malt house and kilns erected in 1907 for the purpose of turning barley into malt using the floor malting process. The site was used for malting purposes since the first malt house was constructed there in 1897 (no longer extant) and the complex was expanded and modernised in the 1960s.
Malt is germinated grain (usually barley), used in brewing and distilling. To produce malt using the floor malting process, a malt house required a large level germinating floor; a steep for soaking the grain; a kiln to dry the green malt; and storage areas.
The new Toowoomba malt house was erected at Black Gully, about 1.6kms north of the town centre, for the Darling Downs Malting Company Ltd. It was operated by the Redwoods, a famous New Zealand malting family who were instrumental in developing the malting industry on the Darling Downs and in encouraging Downs' farmers to grow and harvest barley for malting. Alphonso H Redwood was the managing director. The site had ready access to a water supply (Black Gully is a tributary of Gowrie Creek) and to transport (a railway siding known as Redwood's Siding was constructed to link the malt house with the adjacent main south and west railway lines). The malt house was designed by architects J Marks and Son and was located close to the creek at the northern edge of the site.
After World War II, the maltings laid idle until 1951 when Northern Australian Breweries, part of Carlton United Breweries, took a seven year lease on the malt house to produce malt for its Queensland breweries. From 1958 it was the only active maltings in Queensland, due to Castlemaine Perkins Limited closing its Toowoomba brewery and selling the Margaret Street site for redevelopment. In the 19060's Carlton United Breweries undertook a $1 million expansion of the Black Gully site. This included new buildings to house automatic malting technology, increasing its production capacity from 2359 to 9073 tonnes. In 1973, the maltings were transferred to Carlton United Brewers (NQ) Ltd. In 1987, the south-east portion of the site, formerly containing the water tower and other associated buildings, was sold.
The final coordinates for this cache can be found by completing the Lab cache Toowoomba Factories of the Past.
The container is a large PVC pipe, please ensure it is covered again when you replace
https://labs.geocaching.com/goto/IndustToowoomba
