Hammer Mill Conveyor at Morwell Power Station, the idler rollers are still in place, frozen at whatever angle they were.
Hammer Mill Conveyor at Morwell Power Station, the idler rollers are still in place, frozen at whatever angle they were.

Hammer Mill Conveyor

Provenance

Camera
NIKON D810
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings
14mm · f/8.0 · 2s · ISO 100
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Inside Morwell Power Station, a hammer mill conveyor belt lies disused. Rust spreads across its robust metal frame and worn rollers. This machinery, once central to coal processing, now stands silent, a relic of Australia's industrial past.

Edition
Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

Limited edition
A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

$100.00 AUD
Size
Type
Colour
✓
Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 10 to 20 business days (framed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.
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In situ

Hammer Mill Conveyor at Morwell Power Station, the idler rollers are still in place, frozen at whatever angle they were.Hammer Mill Conveyor at Morwell Power Station, the idler rollers are still in place, frozen at whatever angle they were.Hammer Mill Conveyor at Morwell Power Station, the idler rollers are still in place, frozen at whatever angle they were.Hammer Mill Conveyor at Morwell Power Station, the idler rollers are still in place, frozen at whatever angle they were.Hammer Mill Conveyor at Morwell Power Station, the idler rollers are still in place, frozen at whatever angle they were.
01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title
Hammer Mill Conveyor
Series
Morwell Power Station
Catalogue
MPS-063
Process
Giclée
Captured
15 April 2017
Camera
NIKON D810
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture
f/8.0
Shutter
2s s
ISO
100
Focal length
14 mm
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size
290 × 200 mm
Location
Morwell, Victoria, Australia
Authenticity
C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by
National Trust of Australia (NSW), 2016 Heritage Award, Multimedia
03 THE STORY

About this print

The hammer mill conveyor at Morwell carries crushed brown coal from the hammer mill output along a steel-cased belt to the next stage of the briquette factory's wet-to-dry production line. The conveyor housing runs at an angle through the factory, set on diagonal steel supports anchored to the floor. The casing is painted SECV grey, the surface dust-coated from decades of crushed coal flowing through. Access hatches at intervals along the casing let maintenance staff into the belt line. The supporting structure carries the standard stencilled labels identifying the conveyor segment. The light is the cold daylight from the high windows; the conveyor casing is in heavy shadow at the lower section.

Hammer mills crushed the lignite arriving from the open cut into the particle size needed for downstream drying and pressing. The conveyor moved the crushed material from the mill output through the factory's vertical flow. The plant operated from 1956 to its closure on 8 September 2014. Brett photographed the hammer mill conveyor on 15 April 2017, with the belt sitting motionless in the shut-down factory, the demolition program just announced.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

The hammer mill conveyor carried crushed coal upward through the building. The idler rollers are still in place, frozen at whatever angle they were at when the station stopped.

Brett Patman

Morwell Power Station

The series

Morwell Power Station

2014 · 79 photographs

The State Electricity Commission of Victoria built Morwell as the centrepiece of its postwar plan to sever Victoria's reliance on black coal from New South Wales. Construction ran from 1949 to 1959; electricity production commenced in December 1958 and the first commercial briquettes followed in December 1959. With the demolition of Old Yallourn between 1995 and 1999, Morwell became the earliest surviving large-scale Victorian state-grid power station, registered on the Victorian Heritage Register as H2377 on 1 March 2018.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

The anatomy view shows what this finish is as a physical object: paper margin, mat band, frame depth, acrylic profile. The comparison strip shows how each size sits relative to the others at true scale. Click a size or a finish to update both.

Anatomy · true ratio
07 MORE FROM MORWELL POWER STATION

78 other prints in this series

All prints
Rising Conveyor at Morwell Power Station, the enclosed conveyor carried coal from the storage bunker up to the boiler house.
Rising Conveyor $100.00
Generator at Morwell Power Station, the blade rings inside have the kind of precision that heavy industry does better than.
Generator $100.00
Turbine Floor 3 at Morwell Power Station, a turbine control panel lines the left wall, its rows of analogue gauges.
Turbine Floor 3 $100.00
Turbine Hall Control Room Entrance at Morwell Power Station, the control room sat above the turbine hall floor at one end.
Turbine Hall Control Room Entrance $100.00
08 BY POST · NO SPAM

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