TOMLINS SIMMIE & CO FLOUR MILL

The Tomlins Simmie and Co Flour Mill, a five-storey red brick flour mill designed by John Beebe and constructed by George Davey in 1912 with objects integral, an adjoining gas suction room and engine room (c.1929), and a timber stables and lorry shed (1912). The mill building retains significant early features including grain elevators, chutes, hoppers, flywheels, rotating shafts, fireproof doors, internal timber-clad silos, roller mills and an electric motor.

The Tomlins Simmie and Co Flour Mill is of historical and architectural significance to the State of Victoria. It satisfies the following criterion for inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register: 

Importance to the course, or pattern, of Victoria’s cultural history.

Importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of cultural places and objects

The Tomlins Simmie and Co Flour Mill is historically significant for its association with the flour milling industry in Victoria. From the 1830s until the mid-twentieth century, flour milling played a vital role in the health and economy of towns across Victoria. By the 1950s, Victoria was a major international exporter of flour to nations including South Africa, India, and China. Through the retention of key fixtures and machinery, the Tomlins Simmie and Co Flour Mill clearly demonstrates the processes of storing, cleaning, and milling grain. It allows the wheat milling process of the early twentieth century to be better understood than other comparable places in Victoria. It has the additional distinction of being the first electric powered flour mill in Victoria.   [Criterion A]

The Tomlins Simmie and Co Flour Mill is architecturally significant as a fine and highly intact example of a twentieth-century flour mill, built in an advantageous setting on the Bendigo-Swan Hill/Echuca railway line. The flour mill building (constructed in 1912) exhibits one of the most intact mill interiors in Victoria, having retained a wide array of fixtures and objects integral including grain elevators, chutes, hoppers, flywheels, rotating shafts, fireproof doors, internal timber-clad silos, early roller mills and electric motor. The internal layout of the flour mill also reflects the early milling process, with the storage silos concealed behind the windowless portions of the building; grain distribution and cleaning undertaken in the department adjacent to the railway; and the flour milling undertaken in the southern section of the building. Later additions, including the gas suction room and engine room (built c.1929) demonstrate the expanding capabilities of the mill during the early twentieth century. [Criterion D]