["Derby Meat Works", The Sunday Times (Perth, WA), Sunday 05 March 1916, page 2]

DERBY MEAT WORKS

Will Anticipate Wyndham

Some few weeks ago we published the information that Melbourne capital had sent over experts to make the preliminary arrangements for establishing freezing works at Derby, and after waiting for the usual interval one of the somnolent Terrace "thunderers" got up sufficient energy to extract a sleepy statement by a member of the Government that they didn't know anything about it.

The object was to discount "The Sunday Times" announcement and to again slumber while the dreary old job of erecting the Wyndham Meat Works jogged along with its doomsday system of day labor. Meanwhile the Derby scheme has been going ahead with leaps and bounds. It is being promoted by the Flemington Meat Works, Ltd., in conjunction with certain W.A. investors, and the plans have been prepared by Messrs. Oldham and Cox, of this city. In fact, Mr. Cox is over in the East now in connection with the matter, and tenders have been invited for the supply of the material for the buildings.

Perhaps the Government do not know anything about all this, but they will know when they find that the Derby meat works are completed In less than quarter the time that the Wyndham works are likely to take at the present rate. As a matter of fact, it looks as if the £10,000 scooped by the wily Nevanas and the quarter of a million which the Government are going to sink at the head of Cambridge Gulf will be absolutely thrown away. First the Derby works will be running without any waste of time, and will mop up the whole of the cattle, in the Western Kimberley. Secondly, the Port Darwin works, now being pushed on with all speed by the Union Cold Storage Company, will draw all the cattle in East Kimberley--that is, all east of Wyndham. Thirdly, the U.C.S. contemplate putting on cattle steamers, to take off all the stock that is not secured by the Derby works.

Consequently when the Government have completed their Wyndham works they will find them nothing but a white elephant as contracts will be made with all the pastoralists by either Derby or Port Darwin. If the Wyndham works had been erected four years ago when proposed by the Liberal Government, all this waste of money would have been saved, and competition by the Flemington people and the Union Cold Storage Co. would not have robbed W.A. of its trade.