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Silkwood Brickworks in Far North Queensland

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Location: Silkwood, Queensland, Australiamap
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The historic Silkwood Brickworks are tucked away at the end of Anne Street in Silkwood, a small farming community between Tully and Innisfail in Far North Queensland.

This is the story of one Silkwood family, their brick making business and the residents who are and were fortunate enough to live at the historic Brickworks long after its cogs fell silent.

The Silkwood Brickworks

In June 1936, northen Italian immigrants Giovanni and Pietro Tarditi and their wives (two brothers had married two sisters) bought the land on which the Silkwood Brickworks now stand. Originally from Northern Italy, the family immigrated to North Queensland, farming cane at Ingham and also opening a brickworks there. However, upon hearing of good clay deposits at Silkwood, they decided to purchase about forty-two acres there. Most of this land is now under cane, but in 1936 it was virgin bushland, much of it so low-lying that it had to be built up to prevent flooding. The Tarditis even had to build their own road in.

The brickworks opened in 1936. It quickly became a busy work site and quarry, employing 22 people at its peak. At first the bricks were cut by hand using wire cutters, then pressed, dried and stacked on boards. The owners' accommodation in the early years was a primitive dirt floor humpy with no ceiling and no electricity.
The business was originally named the Maria Creek Brickworks and the brothers taught themselves their craft by experimenting with handmade bricks. Machinery was bought before moving into full-scale production. The kilns were fuelled by wood and later diesel. Three or four men were employed as woodcutters for the works, in addition to four or five who worked with the Tarditis in production of bricks. The Tarditis would keep the kilns going through the night during the firing of the bricks (a process which took about seven days) and the wives toiled alongside their husbands during the day.

The Brickworks in the 1940's
The kiln which is still standing, is the fifth and largest used by the Tarditis. They had built four smaller ones themselves, but commissioned Peter Gardiner, a skilled local bricklayer, for the last one. The huge drying shed, thirty metres square, is also still standing and much of the machinery remains.

Building slackened off during World War II so the brothers earned a living by cutting wood to make railway sleepers, to sell as fuel to the sugar mills and local households. They cut lawyer cane and fashioned baskets of one ton and half ton capacity for loading coal onto the ships at the Cairns wharves. They also made charcoal, burning it in a big pit and selling it as truck fuel, and caught water rats and sold their skins.

After the war, the brickworks reopened and they were making about 8 000 bricks a day. Long pits of clay were dug. The clay put through pug mill, stamper and kiln to form solid clay bricks. Initially hand loaded onto trucks to then be constructed into many residential homes through FNQ.

The Old Brickworks in the 1970's
Some of these bricks were used in buildings such as the Hospital in Innisfail and the Canecutter Hotel as well as buildings in Atherton, Babinda, Cairns, Ingham, Mareeba, Townsville and Tully. Silkwood Hotel, Silkwood Ambulance Centre, school, church, convent and bowling club all arose out of this Silkwood pink/red clay.
Canecutter Hotel
In 1947, one of the brickworks busiest years, the wet season was particularly heavy and on 12 January when the Tarditis had 200,000 bricks stored in the drying shed prior to firing, floodwaters inundated the shed, destroying every brick. The family simply had to bulldoze the shed out and start again.

In time, the younger members of the family came into the business, but eventually it was sold to Campagnello and Kelly, who operated it until its closure in about 1980. Much of the land was sold for cane farming and the actual site of the brickworks changed hands once or twice before being purchased by Betty and Barry Davis in 1986.

What had once been a hive of activity was now a desolate vista of yellow-brown clay and rubble, overgrown by tall, lank grass interspersed with dehydrated pandanus palms and gaping pits (gouged out for clay for the bricks) partially filled with murky water. The Davis's vision, enthusiasm and hard work coupled with a desire to preserve an area and era of historical importance, have resulted in the lagoons and lush parkland of today, in which the memory of the Tarditis and an early northern industry are preserved.
The drive of our ancestors is so to be admired. The strive to get ahead, to provide for their families, to see a need and make that come to fruition. So amazing.

The full story of the Silkwood Brickworks can be seen in the "Innisfail and District Historical Society" 2000 Vol 16 written by the Tarditi's daughter Lina Micale.

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