The days when 50 dairy cows were enough to permit you a good, decent life in the prime dairy farming country around Jamberoo have long gone. 

Geoff Boxsell, 84, remembers the days when there were 96 farms providing milk on a daily basis to the Jamberoo Dairy Coop.

Now there’s ten. And the Coop itself has disappeared. 

Something of a local historian, agricultural consultant Lynne Strong describes Geoff Boxsell as a legend, a living link to the area’s colourful rural past.

When Geoff joined the Coop as foreman in 1959 at the age of 20 after studying dairying technology at Hawkesbury College, there were 23 workers at the Jamberoo Dairy Factory and it was a central part of village life. 

Admired in the industry, Geoff worked at the Coop until 1985 when it merged with Nowra Dairy Co-op to form Shoalhaven Dairy Co-op, which involved building a new dairy in Bomaderry. 

As he explains, Jamberoo was unique amongst dairy Coops because it focused on producing butter, powdered milk for ice cream and sweetened condensed milk rather than bottled milk. 

Geoff’ remembers the profound impact of simple things, well simple from the vantage point of 2024, such as electric fencing, mechanisation, and the government run quota system, which ensured a continuous supply of milk throughout the year in the Sydney Zone (from Wauchope to Milton) but also made winners and losers in a tightly controlled system. 

As he recalls, the manufacturing would start up at 4am, and from 7.30am the forecourt was filled with the noise of carriers and farmers bringing in the milk off the farms building throughout the morning. 

“The coop employees would be upending the ten gallon cans of milk by hand. Meanwhile we would be supporting the manufacturing operations – the evaporators, the butter churn, the cream pasteuriser and the roller dryers for powdered milk.

“When I was a kid, some used to bring milk down to the factory in a horse and cart. But a lot of dairy farmers used carriers rather than bringing it in themselves, the ones down at Jones Beach, East Beach.”

Geoff puts down the demise of Co-ops to ageing plants, insufficient capital, and that the coops were owned by dairy farmers, causing a conflict between adequate payment for manufacturing milk and retention of funds for necessary works. 

Change, as far he’s concerned, was inevitable.

One of the most evident signs is the disappearance of the cattle known as Illawarras, or the Australian Illawarra Shorthorn, which are basically gone now but were famous in the day for their rich colouring and milk production. 

Local agricultural consultant Lynne Strong wants to emphasise that despite the decreased numbers of farmers involved, dairy is not a sunset industry. 

“Those ten farms produce more milk than the 96 farms once did. After the deregulation of the dairy industry in Australia in 2000, the previously protected milk prices were no longer regulated by the government. This significant change exposed dairy farmers to market forces, removing the price guarantees that had been in place prior to deregulation and milk price per litre of milk dropped by half.

“Our Jamberoo farmers were very very proud of their Co-op. We had quite a diversity, from large to very small farms. And the Co-op was an important part of their social life. They would bring their milk to the factory, then spend time talking to the locals, go over to the coop office to buy their butter. Everybody knew everybody. They could also get all their farm supplies there. 

“The odd farmer would go from the factory to the Jamberoo pub for lunch, it was a very social time.

“One local character used to take his bull to the pub, it would stand at the door and wait for him. There were so many stories. 

“These days it’s very very serious business, and you would never, never think of doing that.”

Nostalgic as memories of the old dairy farming life are, for local historians and for the area’s increasing number of tourists it’s interesting to note that the south coast was one of the major centres for the birth of the coop movement which brought prosperity and certainty to the lives of many rural families.

The very first dairy coop, indeed the very first agricultural coop in Australia, was formed in this area. 

A research paper on Illawarra Cooperatives by Mike Donaldson and Ian Southall from the University of Wollongong records that with poor remuneration from Sydney agents the 1870s had been tough on South Coast farmers. 

“On Friday, 15 October 1880, farmers met at the Kiama Courthouse and formed the South Coast and West Camden Cooperative and determined ‘by the instinct of self-preservation’ to revolutionise their industry with Australia’s first successful attempt at co-operative marketing. 

“Illawarra and Shoalhaven farmers immediately withdrew their consignments from ‘the system’ and sent their produce instead to the fledgling cooperative. On Mondays and Thursdays steamers arrived from Wollongong, Kiama and Shoalhaven.” 

The greatest agitator for the Cooperative turned out to be the owner of The Kiama Bugle’s predecessor, The Kiama Independent. Originally posing as an anonymous “Dairyman”, the then proprietor Joseph Watson used the pages of his newspaper to advocate forcefully for cooperatives. By the end of that decade the South Coast Cooperative was responsible for selling 87% of NSW butter, and the dairy coop movement spread up and down the coast. 

By the end of the 1880s more than a dozen dairy cooperatives were operating on the south coast. It would be more than a century, in the 1990s, before the Jamberoo coop would close.

Dave Hall, a well known Jamberoo resident whose father was the local butcher, remembers the old factory fondly. 

“It was a real meeting place, because a lot of the farmers used to come down, mainly in the morning, with all the milk in cans. It was pretty social. All the people who worked there were locals. 

“We used to be friends with one of the farmers, and I used to go up for the milking. They would all put all the cans on the back of the tractor trailer, you could sit on the top of the cans and head through town. It was exciting. I used to love it. You’d never get away with it now.

“The farmers are still around Jamberoo, but a lot of them have retired. Everyone knew it was coming.” 

And remnants of those vanished lifestyles, early hours, hard work, the smell and sound of the cattle you knew by name, trundling your milk cans down to the factory coop, the perhaps not so occasional raucous meeting in the much loved pub, can still be found scattered across the region. 

Times might have been tough, but they didn’t have to deal with the constant angst created by mobile phones, social media, nor the overwhelming feeling of scepticism which has spread across our country as people lose faith in their government, their politicians and their national identity. The pub is still there, the stone walls which kept the cattle in their paddocks are in many cases being restored, and dilapidated farm sheds still bring back that wonderful atmosphere of yore, a time of hard work and common decency.

Jamberoo Factory Achievements:

• Pioneering Milk Quota System: Jamberoo Factory was the first to propose a quota system to the Milk Board in the 1950s, ensuring a consistent milk supply for sweetened condensed milk production. This groundbreaking initiative stabilized milk supply in the region and set a precedent for managing milk production nationwide.
• Manufacturing High-Quality Butter: Jamberoo Factory developed a process for improving the quality of butter by adding a bacterial culture, like yoghurt, to the cream separated from high quality milk supplies from local farms.
• Supreme Champion Dairy Product, 1976: Jamberoo Factory's bulk box of butter was awarded Supreme Champion Dairy Product in Australia in 1976, surpassing all other dairy products including cheese, milk powder, milk, yogurt, and ice cream.
• Innovative Spreadable Butter: Jamberoo Factory experimented with the creation of spreadable butter by mixing cream and vegetable oils, a highly successful product innovation created before it was legal, so it couldn’t be marketed. 
• Dual Payment System: Milk destined for manufacture of dairy products was always paid for  on the basis of its butterfat component alone. In July 1965, Jamberoo Co-op introduced a dual payment system, the first operating in Australia, involving payment for skim milk solids content as well as for butterfat. The system is now universal in Australia but uses butterfat and protein, protein being the most important component of skim milk solids.