Local historian Ian Willis believes the historic Menangle Rotolactor dairy symbolises the battle between urban sprawl and heritage values.
Dr Willis, who is also the president of the Camden Historical Society, says that the iconic Rotolactor, once located on the Macarthur family’s historic colonial property of Camden Park, is at the centre of a stage where a series of actors are contesting rural space over issues of urban development.
That will be the central theme of a paper Dr Willis will present at the 2018 Australian Historical Association Conference, The Scale of History.
The conference will be held at the Australian National University in Canberra between July 2 and July 6.
Dr Willis will present a paper titled: A local cultural icon challenges the forces of neo-liberalism on Sydney’s fringe.
Dr Willis will argue that the Rotolactor dairy, “once a piece of agricultural modernism with its rotating milking platform, sits abandoned in a paddock while the forces of community activism, neo-liberal capitalism, state planning and local parochialism battle it out’’.
“In late 2017 thousands of visitors embraced Rotolactor nostalgia and participated in a successful community festival themed around the dairy icon using the slogan a Milk Shake Up,’’ says Dr Willis in the paper he will present.
“The Menangle Community Association revived memories of the village heyday when 2,000 tourists a week witnessed the milking marvel as cows were spun around.
“Festival organisers used nostalgia to raise awareness of the state of the abandoned dairy and the threat posed by the commodification of its heritage from urban development.
“Many villagers see these processes as a direct assault on the history and heritage, of not only the Rotolactor, but the ownership of the narrative of the village story, its landscape aesthetic and their rural lifestyle.’’
BEST of luck to the residents but their chances of beating the developers with the State Coalition Government on the side of the developers is theirs and Buckley