Gold Coast Bakeries marks 60 years of operation, bread and the lifework of the Marrables family
THE MARRABLE family have baked bread for so long they sometimes feel like they have it in their blood.
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THE MARRABLE family have baked bread for so long they sometimes feel like they have it in their blood.
Their family business, Gold Coast Bakeries, today celebrates 60 years of fresh bread and plenty of memories, from horse-drawn carts to hi-tech baking technology.
Flashback to late 1956 – the Olympic Games were held in Melbourne, TV transmissions began and a Gold Coast couple had a plan to open their own bakery.
Harvey and Dulcie Marrable were keen to get into the industry, just as Harvey’s father James did in the 1920s.
From that bakery, on Scarborough Street, Southport, the bread was delivered by horse and cart around the Gold Coast.
In December 1956 the husband and wife, aged 24 and 23, baked their first loaves at their Mermaid Beach bakery.
The original building no longer stands on the corner of Seaside Ave and Gold Coast Highway, but the bakery’s original steel floor still sits on the now vacant land.
In the early days, Harvey sought advice from his father in the art of baking bread, which was sold for a schilling and sixpence per loaf, the equivalent of around 18c.
In those days the couple made around 100 loaves a day, all of it delivered entirely within the Gold Coast.
Today the company at its Molendinar headquarters produces 20,000-30,000 loaves each day which, as well as supplying the Gold Coast, are shipped to customers in Lismore in northern NSW, Noosa on the Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba in the west.
From the original staff of two, the bakery now has 150 permanent staff and 60 contractors.
Harvey’s son, Warren, now general manager of Gold Coast bakeries, said the way bread was delivered had changed significantly.
“It is incredible how we have gone from the horse and carts my grandfather used at his bakery to the small trucks my parents started with, to the semi-trailers of today,” he said.
“The technology of baking has changed a lot. Back in the old days the dough would be mixed by hand and now we have a machine that can do 350 loaves-worth in just four minutes.
“It would have taken all day to do those sort of numbers back in the 1950s.”
In the early years of the bakery Warren and his sister Helen slept on the floor on top of flour sacks.
By 1967, the thriving business outgrew its premises and was moved to Upton St, Bundall.
The street was surrounded by farmland and considered too remote and isolated by many locals, but the factory prospered after one of the first automated bread plants was installed.
In the 1970s Gold Coast Bakeries began distributing its products in Brisbane.
By 1980 both Helen and Warren had joined the company as the staff continued to grow at a fast rate.
In 1984 the Bundall production facility was too small and it again relocated, this time to its modern day Molendinar complex bordering Smith St Motorway.
Gold Coast Bakeries continues to use its mascot, the “little baker man”, designed by Dulcie Marrable in the 1950s.
Warren, 55, said he was honoured to have been part of his family’s legacy.
“This has always been a part of my life and reaching 60 years of operation is a real achievement and milestone,” he said.
“Things are harder now than they used to be but we certainly hope to still be baking here again in another 60 years time.”
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