The Watswool Building – Australian Estates Wool Store, West Footscray
The Watswool Wool Brokers building at 47-61 Sunshine Road Sunshine Road in West Footscray. Formerly known as the Australian Estates wool store – built in 1941 – it was once considered the largest single wool store in Victoria.
The fading sign says WATSWOOL WOOL BROKERS, but the building predates the name. This building is the former Australian Estates wool store, built in 1941 at 47-61 Sunshine Road, West Footscray. It is/was one of the largest single wool store buildings in Victoria, and was built – in the words of its heritage citation – on a grand scale and with considerable architectural refinement.
In 1947, full of wool, this building was known as the most modern warehouse in Australia; fleeces went straight onto the train line directly opposite (there are extensive railway sidings there – pictured below – and the current Tottenham Railway Station is only 600 metres away). These fleeces were bound for England and America. The Victorian Heritage Database regards this store (and the Goldsbrough Mort store beside it) as the high-water mark of the wool and pastoral industries in Victoria, their sheer scale a measure of what wool meant to Australia's post-war trade and growth.
The glory days of these buildings ended in the 1990s, when consolidation of wool firms emptied the Australian Estates wool store out. The signage we see today dates from its later life: after the big brokers left, the building was used by smaller operators, including the Australian Wool Commission and Watswool Pty Ltd. Watswool is a family-owned wool trading company that was founded in 1971 – it’s still going, though no longer from the building on Sunshine Road.
The building today
One hot summer day in 2026 I set out to document this building, photographically, from the outside. This was just me being a Real Estate Novelist; it wasn’t a commission.
The Watswool building may well be beyond its peak, in wool terms. But it lives on. It has recently been refurbished – new roof, new windows, roller doors, switchboards – and is leased as warehouse and logistics space. It also trades as an events venue, The Woolstore, and has hosted music festivals. It was granted a permit for a series of outdoor concert events over the summer of 2024–25. The building sits under a Heritage Overlay (HO160) in the City of Maribyrnong, which gives its facade – sign included – protection.
External (side) view of the Watswoo; Wool Brokers building on Sunshine Road in Tottenham/West Footscray. Note the architectural flourishes: the mock balconies with wrought iron railings and the steel lattice over some windows. PHOTO: Campbell Mattinson.
All images on this page were taken on a Fujifilm GFX 50R medium-format camera.
When I was a kid, this corner of West Footscray was known as Tottenham. The Tottenham name survives now only in a small parcel of land, and in the rail yards and station opposite. In fact in official terms, there are no longer any residents of Tottenham; it is industrial zoning only. But I went to school with heaps of kids who lived in (what was then known as) Tottenham. They were all good kids: Tottenham bred good people. This area is officially now called West Footscray but I’m betting that I’m not alone in thinking that it’s Tottenham.
Black and white image of the Watswool Wool Brokers building on Sunshine Road, Tottenham, showing the edge of the Goldbrough Mort building next door. PHOTO: Campbell Mattinson.
