Tremain’s Mill owner Stephen Birrell, who purchased the property in 2015, has grand plans for the site, including an Australian Milling Museum (AMM).

He has been making use of Cr Jennings’ research skills as the two of them call on farming families and communities across Australia to dig through their sheds for their own piece of milling history.

And some of that history is being provided by Kaye Whitbread of Bell, near Lithgow.

After Ms Whitbread’s husband came to Bell Station as station master in 1974, the couple became fascinated with grain and in 1987 bought their first truck to transport it. 

“In the 20 years I think we travelled about five million kilometres all up,” Ms Whitbread said. 

She said that they would help load the grain as it could take up to three hours. 

“We would aim to do five trips a week, because otherwise you couldn’t make a profit,” she said. 

“We could be away three weeks at a time, so it was quite a tough job.” 

Ms Whitbread drove several routes during her trucking days, including to Forbes, the Riverina, Narrandera to Sydney, Tamworth and Narrabri. 

Different mills would test the grain first and make small loaves of bread to check everything was fine, Ms Whitbread said. 

“They would leave out bread for us truck drivers after they tested the grain, which was nice,” she said. 

The truck would carry 24 tonnes of grain in one load, but as technology got better, the truck got lighter and the grain got heavier. 

“In the end, I think the truck weighed 14.8 tonnes and we could take around 28 to 29 tonnes of grain,” she said. 

When the couple finished driving the truck in 2007, they took to travelling around NSW taking photographs of old flour mills, which have come in handy for Cr Jennings. 

Part of Cr Jennings’ research is to travel around and document and describe what it is like to have worked in a flour mill. 

“It is a great result to have Kaye come out, so that we have more information,” he said. 

Cr Jennings said he and Mr Birrell are still interested in old equipment, personal stories, flour mill employees, family descendants and knowledge on mills in the local area. ​

“The milling industry was a critical part of every rural town and now they are largely forgotten because they are gone from daily use, and we hope with doing this, they won’t get forgotten,” he said.