Australian Feather Mills

By Lyn Collingwood, Bulletin 4/2025

Australian Feather Mills, which operated at 40A Glebe Street for four decades, was a feather-cleaning factory. It was established when people stuffed their own mattresses and pillows, and those who kept chickens wanted to make some money from the feathers. As late as the 1950s, ‘do it yourself’ bedding was still fairly common practice, using beeswax-coated Japanese cloth or linen ticking as fabric.

The traditional method of cleaning feathers took about three weeks. After any dirt was removed, they were soaked for several days in a tub of clear quicklime water before being washed in ordinary water and laid out on racks to dry in the open air. By the 1930s, commercial cleaning was done by machinery, while ‘do it yourself’ bird owners were advised to soak feathers in a calico bag in a hot, soapy copper and, after rinsing, dry them on a clothesline or in a bag in a warm oven.

Australian Feather Mills, a subsidiary of poulterers and cold storage merchants David Hyland & Sons, was by 1925 in business at 17 Nichols Street Surry Hills, buying poultry feathers and selling them dry, soft and ‘guaranteed purified’. The firm was run by David Hyland’s oldest son, Victorian-born Charles David, whose other business interests included the Ferries Catering Company, which served refreshments on Sydney steamers. Charles Hyland regularly lobbied the Tariff Board to increase duties on imported down and reduce duties on undressed feathers. Body feathers – not the tail or wing – were preferred, as were duck feathers. When local supplies of the latter fell short, they were imported from China. Australian Feather Mills’ major competitor was Hygienic Feather Mills at Botany, whose stock included mutton bird feathers from Tasmania.

In 1934 Hyland’s factory moved from Surry Hills to the rear of 40 Glebe Street, accessed via Ebenezer Place where several ‘slum buildings’ had been condemned for demolition a decade earlier. Nearby houses on Garden Avenue were occupied by families of five or more crammed into three small rooms; one older man kept 24 dogs.

Australian Feather Mills bought feathers for a few pence a pound-weight, and sold them cleaned at a considerable profit. But the processing was labour-intensive and involved huge volumes of the product. As much as 45 pounds weight were needed to stuff a double bed and 25 pounds for a single. Orders for lots of less than ten pounds weight were refused. The firm also kept a supply of kapok, on sale for ‘bedrock prices’.

Many suppliers and customers were from the country and the firm advertised regularly in The Land newspaper. During the Second World War, prohibitive freight charges meant it was not economical to send feathers of any kind by rail from rural areas, and there was a long waiting list of customers by war’s end. Postwar, Australian Feather Mills expanded its Glebe operations. A showroom and packing workroom was built at 52-54 Cowper Street and 25 Queen Street; an amenities block was erected behind 40 Glebe Street; and in 1952, a development application was lodged to erect a temporary structure on 19 Ebenezer Place to protect surplus bags of feathers.

Charles Hyland died in 1952. His executor was his second son Charles Keith (known as Keith) who took over the Sydney business in addition to feather-processing plants he had established in Bangkok and Saigon. During the Vietnam War, Keith Hyland was held captive by the Viet Cong. On release, he expressed no animosity towards his captors but lobbied the Australian and US governments to subsidise production by South Vietnamese farmers who were unable to export because of their country’s overvalued currency. From the mid-1970s, Hyland divided his time between Thailand and Australia. He built a ski lodge in the shape of a Thai temple at Falls Creek, Victoria, and drove a Bentley formerly owned by actress Ingrid Bergman.

In 1975, Australian Feather Mills relocated its ‘Articdown sanitised’ manufacturing to Smithfield. By 1986, it had moved to Wetherill Park, where it remains today. The firm is part of the Downia Group, which supplies ready-made pillows, continental quilts and sleeping bags to customers in Thailand, Australia, China and the Asia-Pacific.

Sources: Australian Dictionary of Biography, Charles Keith Hyland entry; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages; Sands Directories; Trove website