Box Hill Brickworks fail
I’d been meaning to go to Box Hill Brickworks for the past two years. Anyone who knows me well will know I procrastinate and leave anything that can be done next week until next week, and all of a sudden a couple of decades have passed and it still hasn’t been done. Lord knows how I ever managed to get a degree.
Box Hill Brickworks was one of those abandoned places that I kept not getting around to. I finally organised to go out there and photograph it on the weekend just gone, and was looking forward to being able to finally be able to cross it off my list.
I was delighted to see that it was still standing, and access was gained by easily climbing over a barbed-wire fence. However, once we got inside, we were disappointed to find the stairs leading to the upper levels had been blocked with a solid sheet of metal. Fail. Too little, too late.
It was still worth it to see bits of old machinery on the ground level. I always try to picture abandoned factories as how they might have looked when they were still running. And the people who worked in them. And the presence of old hand-written sales records in one of the back rooms made the place that little bit more human.
As we went to climb back over the fence on our way out, a large group of little kids in the park opposite the brickworks yelled “penis!” at us. Such rebels.
x Kitten of Doom
Kitten of Doom 
Shame they’ve locked it up now. Apparently the local residents were ‘horified’ by the place and people who go into it…(according to the Whitehorse leader article the day I explored it) I’d be more worried by the ‘penis’ weilding locals….
Yeah, in a couple of years those kids will be junkies. HA HA HA.
Hi, did you see anyone patrolling there? Apparently there is heaps of squatters there… I live 10 seconds down the road and I’m thinking maybe of checking it out and taking some nice photo’s.
Didn’t see anyone there at all, aside from the aforementioned kids yelling “penis”.
i need the address this place is perfect for a music video! i did a shoot a few years ago there but unfortunately lost the piece of paper with an address.Can you please send me it? rockcityangel90@gmail.com
I don’t give out addresses; just google it, should take you about five seconds.
this is area still able to be entered and photographed?!
No idea; go check it out for yourself.
There’s a way up into that blocked off bit. These days there is a bit of an old gate that lies against the wall and a bit of rubber -TOTALLY safe 😉 – that you can use to pull yourself up into the building. I find the other building is more interesting to explore though. Lots of old machinery etc. Also, you don’t need to climb the fence to get in, there’s a really big hole in the lake side of the fence that you can easily climb through.
Love that place, it’s a strange kind of beautiful.
Thanks Kitten im off to have a look x x x
G,day as of November 2013, the factory is easily accessible, there are holes in the fence, the blocked off areas as mentioned above have been destroyed so all you need to do is climb up a bit, worth the visit, such a mad place.
Federation st box hill,the mechanical side is where the bricks were pressed and stacked,the kiln cooked the bricks there are missing buildings….one where a tumbler was housed to chip the corners off the brick
My dad used to work at the Brick And Pipe.