Excerpt from the article “The Story of Our Secondary Industries” The Age Saturday January 23rd 1937
To Melbourne by Bullock Waggon:
The firm of T.B.Guest and Co. Pty. Ltd. had its origins in Sydney about 86 years ago,
but for over 80 years it has been in Melbourne. It began as Barnes, Guest and Co. in
1851 at a small factory in Pitt-street, Sydney. Ships’ biscuits were the sole product of
the factory. The partners took turns at baking, and delivered the goods by hand truck.
One night while Mr. Barnes was walking along Pitt-street he was shot in the back by a
hold-up man. Mr T. B. Guest carried on the business, but reports of Victoria’s wonderful
progress drew his attention southward, and after a time he closed the Sydney factory,
packed his plant and machinery on a bullock waggon and set out for Melbourne.
It took T. B. Guest three months and a half to travel to Melbourne. He set up his
machinery in premises in William-street, opposite the site now occupied by the Law
Courts, and opened the new factory in 1856. The buildings consisted of two large iron
stores- the front one used as a warehouse; the other as the factory. A notable feature
of the plant at the time was a travelling oven, consisting of an endless chain of
perforated iron, eighteen feet in length, which passed slowly through the heated area,
bearing on its surface the biscuits in process of baking. The business was still carried
on in the name of Barnes, Guest and Co.
A visit of inspection to the factory of Messrs. Barnes, Guest and Co., “proprietors of the
sole biscuit factory in Melbourne,” is described in an industrial article published in
“The Age” of 6th May, 1857 (Sandridge-Port Melbourne, where Mr. Swallow’s biscuit
factory already had been established, was not then regarded as part of Melbourne
evidently.) It is stated in the article that the firm (Barnes, Guest and Co.) employed two
men and three boys, “who turned out as much work as twelve men on the old
system,” and, although the works had not been in operation more than six months,
the excellent quality of the goods produced had procurred for the firm medals of
distinction from the Victorian Industrial Society.
“The Firm,” the article continued, “has a weekly average of one ton of fancy goods
and five tons of cabin biscuits. The ship bread, indeed, derived from the other
Australian colonies and America, is now nearly driven out of the market, and very little
is sent from England. The market at present is excessively overstocked with English
fancy goods and the strong prejudice in their favour confines the sale of those made
in Victoria to a very small compass; but as the excellence of their quality, in fact their
positive superiority, is daily being discovered, the sale is gradually increasing. The
only other biscuit works now in the colony are those managed by Mr. Swallow,
at Sandridge, where the machinery is worked by hand power. There are two biscuit
works in Sydney which formerly supplied the whole of the ship bread here.”
After a couple of years the name of the firm was changed to T.B.Guest and Co. In
the course of time the factory premises were extended along William-street to the
corner of Lonsdale-street, and in 1898 the firm moved to its present premises (since
considerably extended) in Anderson-street, West Melbourne. The factory now- a
four story building-covers an area of 400 x 200ft.;employs about 350 people and
has a delivery fleet of 25 vehicles. The factory foreman, Mr.C.H.Judd, joined the
staff when he was a boy of ten-68 years ago and the secretary, Mr.L.W.Whitton,
has been with the firm for 58 years. The late chairman and managing director,
Mr. Edgar L. Guest, who died recently, was a son of the founder, and two sons remain
in the business.