Surviving the Yarloop Fire and the clean-up the one building left standing was the Vault. This sturdy structure with its 9 cm thick steel door was attached to the Workshops’ Main Store and housed and protected its contents.
Originally built to house the Millars’ Workshops’ records, their payrolls for the Workshops and surrounding mills and possibly even explosives, these contents are an amazing collection. Although there was some water damage following the removal of the door by the clean-up team, most records were recovered.
The records in the Vault included Yarloop Workshops Inc. records, dating back to the commencement of the restoration that followed the Category 5 Cyclone, Alby, which hit the South-West in 1978. After the cyclone local people persuaded Bunnings to hand over the severely damaged site to the newly formed Yarloop Workshops Restoration Group. This body immediately began raising funds for the incredible restoration of the site. They replaced damaged timber walls and steel roofing. They restored items that were still on the site and collected other machines and objects related to the timber industry. This was just the beginning of the work that resulted in the amazing Workshops we knew. This story can be found in the preserved records taken from the Vault and packed in 60 storage boxes currently held at the Shire of Harvey Depot.
Some of these records came from the Yarloop Mill, following Millars’ sale of the Mill and the Workshops to Bunnings. There are also records of the town. The Hospital Board Minutes cover its history. RSL records up to the amalgamation of the Yarloop RSL with the Harvey RSL were found. Items from St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church survived in the Vault, though the church building was destroyed. Some books, maps and photographs also survived. There were even a few objects found inside the Vault including several of the prized wooden engineering patterns that were used to make moulds for metal casting – a minute remnant of the hundreds that were stored and destroyed in the Workshops’ Patterns Store.
Of particular heritage value were the superbly kept ledgers from as far back as 1900. These recorded each item sent from the Main Store of the Workshops to each of the 24 or so Millars’ mills. Despite what they have been through over the years, including the Fire and the clean-up, many of the 120 volumes are in relatively good condition.
Two of the Workshops’ volunteers worked for more than a year at the Shire’s Depot, trying to preserve and sort the items that Shire and Workshops’ personnel had retrieved from that one remaining building on the site, the Vault.
Hopefully, after the passing of more than five years, a home will be built to accommodate these treasures. The Vault will be refurbished as a significant feature in the first stage of the redevelopment, as a memorial to what was there for well over a century.[1]
[1] From ‘The Phoenix Rises Very Slowly’ Part 3, by Allan Ward.