Local resident, Tom Harrington, Once told me that as a school boy in 1921 he remember a chemical plant in Haley Street Diamond Creek. He did not know what went on there but they used a lot of wood .Tom, it seemed, was the only local who could remember the plant.
Some years after this conversation a Dr D Rae of Monash University’s chemical department rang me to enquire about the Truelite Gas Company at Diamond Creek in 1921 and if I knew the site . He was writing a paper, “Adventure in Arcadian Chemistry “, on wood distillation in Australia.
I went to Tom’s site, now a backyard, and found the only evidence of the plant was a big circle of concrete with metal edging. This was for the storage gasometer.
Dr Rae then sent me a copy of a Federal Government publication that revealed the mystery.
In 1921, the Truelite Gas Company incorporated in South Australia was operating a wood distillation gas plant at the west end of Haley Street, Diamond Creek to provide street lighting in the town and retailing botted gas.
Local wood at firewood prices was supplied to the plant in horse drawn drays.
The gas came from dried wood heated in two sealed retorts which released vapour that was piped away for treatment and stored in Tom’s gasometer. Each retort produced 20 cubic feet of gas.
The plant closed down in 1923. The site and process in unique in our industrial history as there were only two other wood distillation plants that operated in Victoria.
One was a small plant at Springvale and the other one was a monster plant at Warburton operated by Cumming Smith, a major Victorian Chemical Company with another chemical plant at Yarraville making fertilizer.
The Warburton plant at Britannia Creek recovered gas and liquids from wood and produced an amazing number of chemicals including acetone which was used in making cordite for munitions during World War 1 plus celluloid and chloroform.
At its peak the plant employed 100 to 150 staff and its feed stock wood stack was 12 feet high and one mile long. The plant which started in 1907 shut down in 1924 and in 1926 bushfires burnt the plant to the ground. This was the end of the wood distillation in Victoria but not the end of wood gas.
During World War 2 petrol was in short supply and rationed Motorists received a coupon for one gallon of petrol, not enough for many motorists who left their cars in the garage on jacks. You could buy a coupon on the black market for five bob but you needed a few quid in your kick to afford that.
To stretch out the rationed petrol over 200,000 motor vehicles in Victoria were powered by gas producer units converting charcoal into engine gas.
The Government built a charcoal kiln at Kurth Kiln, 7 kilometres north of Gembrook to supply producer gas. The kiln survives in the Bunyip State Park as a reminder to visitors of those wars time days.
By Kevin Patterson (Nillumbik Historical Society)
