An old flour mill in Hobart has been given a fun second life, with Cumulus Studio (an architectural firm) transforming it into a brand-new whisky distillery. The Callington Mill Distillery in Oatlands, Tasmania, retains the classic structure of the original mill, and, of course, the original windmill itself used to mill grain in the 1800s and 1900s still stands.

Despite operating as a grain mill since it was first opened in 1837, the location has a long-standing connection to the world of distillery. Entrepreneur John Vincent, who first opened the mill after seeing the promise of the growing Oatlands area in Hobart, operated a second (less legal) business out of it – a distillery.

The placement of the mill was advantageous, with the Oatlands area growing a lot of wheat at the time, but no existing mill in place to turn it into flour. For John Vincent, another benefit of the mill was that, through its illegal distillery, he was able to keep the several pubs he owned in the area fully stocked.

After changing hands several times, the mill ceased to operate due to the shifting of the majority of grain milling to mainland Australia in the 1900s. Since then, the mill has been used mostly for educational purposes, with visitors being able to visit the mill and mill precinct to see how flour milling occurs. To this day, Callington is still the only working Lincolnshire Mill in the Southern Hemisphere and remains fully functional, even after the building’s reincarnation as a whisky distillery.