Behind walls passed by tens of thousands of motorists each day is a remarkable 24-hour operation that traces its origins to the very earliest days of the Gold Coast. Take a sneak peek at what goes on inside.
“Saturday mornings I like to get up and have a cup of tea and two weeks in a row there was no milk in the fridge,” he says.
Of all people. For 33 years, Mark has been surrounded by milk. Millions and millions of litres of it.
Tasting it, testing it, helping it on its way to shops and supermarkets all over the Gold Coast.
Monday to Friday, Mark is among around 200 staff working around the clock at the Norco factory on Brisbane Rd at Coombabah.
Unnoticed by drivers and passengers of the thousands of cars that pass by each day, behind its high walls is an extraordinary around-the-clock operation that produces 1,350,976 bottles of fresh milk a week.
Milk is bottled at the Norco operation on Brisbane Rd in Coombabah. Picture: Richard Gosling.
COLD, CLEAN … AND QUICK
Three things strike you when you step inside the Norco factory, an ever-moving kaleidoscope of whirling, thrusting machinery.
The first is that it’s cold. Very cold.
Inside a room where Norco’s distinctive grey crates are loaded on to palettes before being shipped to consumers, the temperature is a chilly two degrees.
For workers starting their day, that has its benefits.
“It wakes you up!”, Peter Ehlefeldt says.
The second thing that hits you is that it’s clean.
At the heart of the plant are four giant silos.
“The silos hold between them half a million litres of milk,” training coordinator Bruce Tattersall says. “That’s about a day’s production.”
But although the plant runs 24 hours from Monday to Friday, and 18 hours on Saturday, the silos are not always full.
“It’s 20 hours production, four hours cleaning,” Bruce says.
Training coordinator Bruce Tattersall at the Norco operation on Brisbane Rd in Coombabah. Picture: Richard Gosling.
The third thing that hits you? It’s quick. Very quick.
Thanks to an array of briskly whirring and clicking machines, not long elapses from the moment milk arrives in tankers from farms to the time it is trucked back down Brisbane Rd pasteurised, packaged and ready for shop shelves.
“The milk goes out to market as quick as possible,” Bruce says.
“The filling room does about 100 bottles a minute.
“We’re packing off around three million litres a week.”
A Bedford milk tanker outside the South Coast Co-op Dairy, Scarborough Street, Southport, in 1961. Picture: Bob Avery/Gold Coast Libraries Local Studies Collection.
THE FLYING MILKMAN
The Norco factory on Brisbane Rd is continuing a proud Gold Coast tradition.
When it opened in November 1981, it replaced the old South Coast Dairy factory on Scarborough St in Southport. That was a place of fond memories for many long-term residents and visitors to the area, who recall stopping by for Bippy ice creams and cartons of Gold Coast Milk, emblazoned with its iconic logo of a surfer gliding through a barrel.
And even earlier, of stopping by for a bottle of milk during break time at school.
In a book named Southport Stories, produced by council in 2009, Bryan Smith recalled how children from Southport State School would leave the grounds at lunch and head to the factory.
“We would give our penny to the factory employee at the door (generally Mr Percy Walker),” he said. “The half pint bottles of milk were just inside the door of the factory and we would get our bottle of milk, sit on the small section of lawn in front of the factory to drink it and put the empty bottle back in the crate when we were finished.”
Milk bottling hall at South Coast Co-operative Dairy Association Ltd, Scarborough Street, Southport, in 1972. Picture: Bob Avery/Gold Coast Libraries Local Studies Collection.
Those were also the days when milk was delivered to doorsteps by an army of milkmen, as recalled by Peter J Bracken in the same publication.
“In the late ’50s I was a milkman in Southport. Bottled milk from SC Dairies in Scarborough St was 18 cents a litre then,” he said.
“Milk money was left out with the empties by the customer and milk was delivered in the wee small hours.
“Because I ran between houses where most milkmen walked, I got the name of Peter the flying milkman.
“One of my customers sometimes collected her milk from me in her ‘baby doll’ pyjamas. I recently found out she was at the same address – after 50 years! I called in again and we shared a cup of tea and a chat.”
Veteran employee Mark Thistlethwaite in the cold room at the Norco factory on the Brisbane Rd in Coombabah. Picture: Richard Gosling.
TIES THAT BIND
The last of the Norco employees who began their careers at the factory in Southport have only recently retired.
It’s that kind of company. Local. Close knit.
People stick around.
Mark Thistlethwaite is one of a number who have been there for more than 30 years, holding a variety of roles, including in planning, maintenance and the important job of lab testing.
“From a quality perspective, I think that Norco, that’s what we strive to do. Really concentrate on the shelf life of the milk. That’s what we look at every day in our testing, to give our milk the resilience that it needs.”
He remembers the 1990s, when the factory still produced soft serve, ice cream cakes, Dippys, the Paddle Pop lines and King Sandwich – and milk was in bottles.
“We were still using glass. We had a big washing machine. I can still hear it,” he says.
“And the tops, the alfoil. We used to use that for Christmas decorations in the lab.”
The alfoil lids are gone, but not the same spirit among the staff.
“Here, especially in the maintenance department, the guys are just a lot of fun,” Mark says.
“There’s always someone. We’re not paying out on them, but we just have a bit of larrikin type of fun.
“Different people get it a bit harder than others. The apprentices get it pretty hard.”
Father and son duo Brody and Peter Ehlefeldt from the maintenance crew. Picture: Richard Gosling.
WHEN WORK IS FAMILY
Among those apprentices is 24-year-old Brody Ehlefeldt, who works in the maintenance department with father Peter.
The maintenance team is small, but among the most important in the factory.
When machinery gets stuck, they unstick it. Fast.
“We’re at the whole site’s beck and call,” Peter says. “(We just) drop and run.
“Once one thing stops at the end of the line, everything prior to that will slowly stop. And you’ve got to keep it cold. It can’t sit out in the open.
“There’s a lot of work. A lot of responsibility on our shoulders. But we take it in our stride.”
No day is ever quiet. But that’s how Peter likes it.
“There’s a lot of variety here,” Peter says. “Anywhere from where the milk receiver comes in with the trucks, to deliver the milk to the factory, the raw milk side of things, right through to your pasteurising. It’s alway interesting work up on the pasteuriser. All the way down through the factory, where they bottle milk.
“All that sort of machinery, and that sort of stuff, is interesting to work on.”
But best of all is being able to show his son the ropes.
“It’s just enjoyable, working with your son,” he says. “You pass on information from father to son, or from tradesman to apprentice. It’s a rewarding time in life. To see (him) develop from a schoolboy into a tradesman.”
It’s something Brody also appreciates.
“It’s great learning from everyone,” he says. “I love it.”
School children and guests at the opening of the South Coast Milk Factory, Scarborough Street, Southport, in 1936. Picture: George A Jackman/Gold Coast Libraries Local Studies Collection.
A MUCH-LOVED PRODUCT
Brody is the latest to take up the baton of a Gold Coast tradition that has been ongoing for at least 87 years, since the opening in 1936 of the old art deco building that housed the original Scarborough St factory.
A tradition that has continued uninterrupted by war, by Covid, by the 2022 floods that devastated partner farmers in northern New South Wales.
A tradition – and a product – that staff are proud of.
“I do love milk,” Mark Thistlethwaite says. “I used to come to the cold room. We used to make a thick shake, when you shook it up it got frothy. And it was just so nice. So I’d just pour out 50ml and have a shot and I’d get my fix.
“So I do love milk, yeah.”
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