Duly & Hansford: nuts and bolts to daredevil speedsters

Remember all those nuts and bolts General Motors used on Carrington Road Marrickville? These could have come straight from the Duly & Hansford factory two doors down.

Duly and Hansford opened its factory on 1 February 1927, when Mr Duly boasted the firm was “now in a position to supply the wants of the whole of Australia with bright nuts and bolts.” This impressed Federal Minister for Trade and Customs, Mr Herbert Pratten, who officially opened the factory. Pratten was a supporter of local industry and Australian-made products. He said, “if you buy the home-made article you keep both your goods and your money. If you buy outside all you get is the goods.”

Duly & Hansford soon expanded to springs and shock absorbers including Duofor and Personne-Reed brands. These were used by racing hero Wizard Smith in an attempt to break the land speed record according to an ad taken out by Duly & Hansford in the Sunday Times on 3 November 1929.

The Mystery Car (also known as ANZAC) was a 18.7 litre aircraft engine made by Rolls Royce mounted on a Cadillac limousine chassis with a streamlined racing car body (Eric North, 2004). Wizard Smith set the Australasian record at 90 Mile Beach near Auckland with a speed of 239 km per hour in January 1930. For more on Wizard Smith, see Clinton Walker (2012) Speed, Modernism and the Last Ride of Wizard Smith.

Duly & Hansford continued manufacturing automotive parts on Carrington Road Marrickville until 1968 when taken over by US automotive firm, TWR Inc, which operated the factory for another three decades. Duly & Hansford’s factory buildings are still used by the automotive industry today through repair and body shops.

 

Carrington Roads Industrial Past – Marrickville

Carrington Road’s industrial past (and future?) Save Marrickville is campaigning against a proposed 35-storey residential development along Carrington Road Marrickville which includes the last Australian General Motors factory (listed by the National Trust: picture below), but I have found a much bigger history.

In 1926, the American motor vehicle firm General Motors (Australia) Pty Ltd established assembly plants in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney to produce motor vehicles for the Australian market. Sydney architects Ross and Rowe were commissioned for the Sydney plant (6-10 Carrington Road). The design was to comply with all the conditions of a modern assembly plant and to provide the best possible conditions for all employees, according to GM’s magazine Motor Progress. The NSW Premier, the Hon. JT Lang, opened the factory declaring:

Factories were the milestones along the road Australia must travel to become a self-contained nation whose secondary industries would absorb her primary products . . . there is no market like that created by the employment of local labour . . . and it will be a striking advertisement to the world of this country of ours.

General Motors – Carrington road, Marrickville

General-Motors purchased Holden in 1931 during the Depression (fearing it would be snapped up by a competitor) and continued to operate there until 1939. The factory then produced tyre cord until 1961 after being taken over by Davies Coop, a significant
corporation in the Australian textile industry in the Twentieth Century.
Other businesses were established close to General Motors. AH Peters (16 Carrington Road) made bodies for trucks and utilities including ambulances used all over NSW.

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