Robert Gordons milkjugs bring all the boys to the yard.

Thirty years ago, Robert ‘Andy’ Gordon walked into a ten by eight foot tin shed, picked up a lump of clay and turned his potters wheel. The Pack Track Pottery was born.

But the story and inspiration for Robert Gordon dates long before 1979 and a rickety home made studio.

Andy’s mother, the renowned Australian potter June Dyson, set up her studios in 1945. June was from fine creative heritage. Her father, Edward Dyson was a successful poet and author and her uncle Bill, a revered political cartoonist and the Australian Government’s official artist during the First World War.

June formed a formidable partnership with her husband Collin who became the company’s business director. And it was June’s second son Andy, who showed most interest in the pottery, helping out in the studios from his early twenties.

It was inevitable that Andy would one day follow in his mother’s footsteps. And having married his English wife Barbara, the couple set about moulding their dream.

The Pack Track Pottery may have been simple and small but this tiny studio tucked away in Gembrook an hour’s drive from Melbourne, became a prodigious production line. Every Sunday Andy and Barbara made the trip to the City and to St Kilda market with their week’s wares. The pots sold as quickly as they could make them.

By 1987 it was time for the company to expand. A factory in Pakenham was bought and Robert Gordon had grown from a tin shed with a dirt floor to a very large purpose built headquarters. Employing 30 staff, the Pakenham HQ remains its home today.

It was also the time to bring new staff into the business. Andy and Barbara didn’t have to look far. Their four children, Hannah, Kate, Bobby and Sam all joined the firm. History had repeated.

More than sixty years of heritage and three generations of potters.

Robert Gordon. Proud of its past. Its future, fired with imagination.

Find their products in our very own QTique.