Nylex Clock, Neon sign and clock on barley silos in Cremorne, Victoria, Australia.
The Nylex Clock is a neon sign and digital time-and-temperature display mounted on an open steel lattice atop a tall cylindrical concrete silo in Cremorne, beside the Yarra River and Monash Freeway. The sign shows "NYLEX" in red letters above "PLASTICS" in green, with a rectangular clock panel above displaying orange-red digits. It alternates between the time, the temperature and the words "Nylex Plastics" and "Nylex Every Time!".
Neon Electric Signs of South Melbourne built the sign and clock in 1961 for Nylex, an Australian plastics manufacturer, atop barley silos of the 1950s and 1960s. A $70 million office plan for the silo site was dropped in October 2003, and the sign was listed on the Victorian Heritage Register in 2004. Restoration costing $300,000 restarted the clock on 29 June 2005, using 17,000 LEDs, 800 metres of neon tubing and two kilometres of cable.
The sign alternates the words "Nylex Plastics" with "Nylex Every Time!", so the brand name itself became part of Melbourne's popular culture. Paul Kelly's song "Leaps and Bounds" refers to the clock, and Baker Boy and Dallas Woods filmed the video for "Black Magic" at the silo site.
The clock and sign face the Monash Freeway and the northern bank of the Yarra River, so they are seen best from the freeway or from trains crossing into the city. The display has been inoperative since March 2009, apart from a brief lighting on 29 January 2015, so do not rely on it for the time.
The clock and sign were made by South Melbourne firm Neon Electric Signs and erected in 1961 for Nylex, a plastics manufacturer. The 20 barley silos beneath were built in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2015 a group calling itself the Nylex Clock Collective broke into the silos, found the switch and briefly lit the clock, which drivers reported running an hour behind because daylight saving had not been applied.
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