The end is finally in sight for a small town's 10-year labour of love to restore its 131-year-old butter factory.
Community members have dedicated thousands of volunteer hours to fundraising, grant writing and physical labour.
Now it's finally boiled down to just a handful of jobs.
The restoration of the heritage-listed Milang Lakeside Butter Factory, including its distinctive barrel-roofed building, will breathe new life into a space for the community to meet, celebrate and learn in.
Before: The Milang Lakeside Butter Factory before work started.. . After: The renovated factory.. .
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Preserving unique history
The factory overlooks the 570-square-kilometre expanse of Lake Alexandrina that ends only a few kilometres from the mouth of the Murray River.
John and Karyn Bradford have been two of the driving forces for the restoration since the very first public meeting in 2014, when the community agreed to work towards the purchase and restoration of the factory and the manager's cottage.
Like many locals in this quiet town of fewer than 1,000 people, situated within an hour of Adelaide, they're passionate about preserving the unique history that has always been linked to the flows and health of the Murray River.
When the factory was built in 1893 the factory owner was able to look over to the Milang Jetty and the paddle steamers lined up as their crews off-loaded produce from farms dotted around the lake and up the river.
"There were a lot of smaller farms around in those days that had dairies," Mr Bradford said.
"Most of all the big ones got together and sold up and became bigger farms, and the days of the small cockies with his few cows was over — especially when the refrigeration things came in."
In its early days the butter from Milang and other small South Australian dairy factories was often sent to the West Australian goldfields.
The factory became part of Farmers Union in 1919 and a manager's cottage was added, but operations closed for good in the 1960s.
Parts of the factory found a new, fleeting use in 1990 as a backdrop in the television mini-series Shadows of the Heart but largely it remained untouched.
A collapsed tunnel and seaweed insulation
During the years of work to restore both the factory and the Baltic pine and corrugated-iron manager's cottage, volunteers have worked hard to keep as many original features as possible.
The seaweed insulation in the roof of the cottage had to go due to modern fire-safety laws but a small part was retained as a reminder as people walk through.
The barrel roof was replaced but the old one remains visible to people inside.
Underneath the factory, the 13-foot-deep (3.9 metres) cellar needed to be "beefed up" with huge beams and uprights to support the concrete floor above, with volunteers using the factory's old dumbwaiter to remove soil and bring down concrete.
"It was all dug out by hand [back in the 1890s]," Mr Bradford said.
"Maybe they borrowed a few Cornish miners."
A tunnel (now collapsed on the other side) went from the cellar out to the base of Tod's Hill, providing ventilation and cooling for the milk and butter.
It was also a source of fun for local children and scouts visiting the nearby camp who used to climb through into the factory before it closed.
"We had a really interesting chap call in early in the restoration when we'd just taken over, and he was at a scout camp here and a few of them had come in and they stole a wheel of cheese," Mrs Bradford said.
"He felt guilty about it — he was in his 70s and he felt guilty about it all his life — so he gave us a donation."
A town's passion
With a council grant of $350,000 towards the cost of buying the property and others from river and history-based organisations to cover the cost of engineering and preserving works, there have also been endless fundraisers over the past 10 years.
"It's become a passion really, such a great project for the town. I want to see it finished and so do the boys," Mr Bradford said.
"We've all got this urge to see it right through from the very start and lucky we have a really good crew that hang around, come every week, volunteer every day, working bee days, fundraising days, all sorts of things."
The average age of the core group of volunteers is more than 70 (although younger local tradies and apprentices pop in to lend a hand when they can).
At 65, Ray Perry is considered the young bloke of the group. As well as contributing to the construction, he helped to type up the handwritten notes for local historian Alvyn Hopgood, who has written two books about the factory and the farmers that supplied it.
Mr Perry, along with electrician Grant Halliday, woodworker Neil Johnson and the others, are completing one of the last remaining large jobs.
They are transforming the old loading dock into a stage area that will one day host musicians and speakers as they look over the restored stone walls and historic vats and memorabilia that will decorate the space.
Mr Bradford said people often asked him what he'd do with himself when the job was finished.
"I'll feel fairly relieved and proud, I think," he said.
After 10 years he says the end is so close "you can taste it".
"We'll dress it up and make it look the part and tell the story. It's a great story and one I hope gets far and wide."