Factories

Census returns indicate the general decline of farming and the growing importance of industry during the twentieth century. While in 1933 agriculture was still the major employer, in the years immediately after the war the shire supported many new small industries. Some of these were based on finishing agricultural produce.

In 1955 Stewart's New Cheese Factory opened at Baxter and at the same time intensive factory farming was used to revive the district's poultry industry.1

19 Sir Lawrence Hartnett beside one of his Holdens [Jones].

Some small industries had employed local people before the First World War. Wood-carting and wood-working provided some work and the many springs in the shire were used bottled mineral water. Best known of these was the Frankston Springs Bottling Company owned and operated by the Vitreon family company. But gradually a wider range of manufacturing industry moved into Frankston. During the 1950s Frankston shared in the general manufacturing expansion of Melbourne's urban fringe. In 1951 Barnett's Cordial Factory building was used as the starting point for a new industry, Dowd's Bra and Girdle Manufactory.2 For a time it appeared as if Frankston would become the site for Australia's motor car industry. The Peninsula Automotive Engineering works assembled Hartnett Cars in 1952.3 This failed to give an edge to the local area in securing major motor plants. Ultimately the General Motors factory was sited at Dandenong rather than Frankston. Nevertheless Frankston still does have a very important link with the Australian motor industry, in the former home of Sir Laurence Hartnett. Hartnett was born in England in 1898, attended Epsom College Surrey and went into an engineering apprenticeship with Vickers, the leading English engineering firm. Harnett served in the RAF in the First World War, travelled widely after the war and then in 1934 became General Motor's Managing Director of the Holden Motor Car Company.

Instead of winding up the company as his American employers wanted him to do, Hartnett expanded production for several years. He then went on to play a key role in aircraft manufacture during the Second World War. After experimenting with car assembly in a small plant in Frankston he sought to have a major Holden plant established in Frankston. This bid failed, however Hartnett's house Rubra in Watts Parade Mt Eliza is a reminder of his role in motor manufacturing, an industry central to the modern character of Frankston and of most other places in Australia. Even if Frankston failed in its bid to become a Victorian centre of motor manufacturing, other industries were established in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of these produced brands of consumer goods with names almost as familiar as the Holden car.

Amongst the major local industries was the Bata Shoe Factory established in Seaford and Wormald Industries, both in Wells Rd.4 Besides these major firms many small manufacturers and finishing workshops were located on main roads leading east and north-east from Frankston and Seaford. Frankston remained a favourite site for extractive industries as well. Sand and gravel were extracted from quarries around the municipality. The extent of these industries resulted in several disputes. The longest-running such battle centred on the Frankston Pine Plantation, where there were several attempts to extend sand-mining during the 1960s and 1970s.5

The Frankston Pine Plantation surrounded one of the highest points in the municipality. Land was set aside here as a timber reserve during the nineteenth century and in 1909, after the a new Forest Act was passed in the Victorian parliament, the area was defined as a "State Pine Forest".

In July 1909 fifty men were employed under the direction of W.J. Hartland the conservator, planting trees, the most common of which was Pinus radiata [Monterey Pine]. In the depressed 1930s a saw-mill was set up in the plantation and unemployed men on "sustenance" were employed in the plantation.6

In 1956, almost three hundred acres of the plantation were acquired for state housing. Other attempts were made to extend sand-mining in the plantation, but after some resistance by residents and councillors inquiries from the Housing Commission of Victoria, much of the site was set aside for housing.7 Only a small remnant of the forest plantation survives [near the route of a freeway]. The former plantation office cum residence also survives at 355 Frankston-Dandenong Road. The Pine plantation never really employed many Frankston residents and only when house-building began on the site did it employ many local residents. However by the end of the 1950s Frankston had become far more industrial than agricultural. The workforce of Frankston while not all employed in local industry had become far more industrial in character.