THE Bendigo Certified Milk (B.C.M.) name on the former butter factory building at the corner of Queen Street and Valentine Lane is illustrated, along with a milk bottle and butter wrapper once processed at the factory.
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From the late 1920s until about the 1960s three Favaloro brothers were operating the dairy products business as well as a chain of cafeterias and a bakery.
Australian Hearing occupies the milk products building today where horse and carts once unloaded milk and cream through a rear loading dock from Valentine Lane.
A little further down the lane on the right-hand side Favaloro’s bakery dispatched their products from a side entrance while flour deliveries were hoisted via horse power and windlass up to the second floor. Valentine’s Antiques fronting Hargreaves Street now occupies the former bakery.
The imperial one pint (568ml) blob-top milk bottle has the company’s name embossed upon its side along with the warning that the bottle was loaned and could not be legally used by others. In the days of re-usable milk bottles, the cardboard discs ceiling the bottle contents could be opened with surprising results to those nearby.
Australian primary school children from the 1950s onwards received free milk once a week delivered in 1/3 pint (190ml) blob-top bottles. Our school eventually appointed a parent to insert straws and supervise the distribution.
The butter wrapper catalogued recently by the Bendigo Historical Society is an example of the packaging and promotion of the former nearly forgotten B.C.M. dairy products processor and is now preserved for posterity.
