Grader

A heavy machine stands among the older fixed plant inside the Bathurst Gasworks, its housing weathered to a uniform rust-brown and its working surfaces obscured by decades of dust. The body of the machine carries the bolted access panels, drive housings, and hopper openings typical of coal-handling equipment from the mid-twentieth century. Layers of grime coat the structure and the floor underneath. Light falling across the equipment picks out the edges of the housings and the curve of a chute that runs from the top of the machine down to a level below the floor plate.

The exact function of this machine is unconfirmed. The most likely identification is a screening machine for sorting coal into different grades or sizes before it reached the retort feed hopper. Coal arriving at a gasworks needed to be brought to a consistent particle size before carbonisation, and screens of this kind were a standard part of the coal-handling line at most regional council gasworks of the period. The Bathurst Gasworks operated on coal carbonisation from 1888 until 1979, with the plant rebuilt around 1960. The machine has not been turned over since gas production ceased in 1987 under AGL. The identification is offered as a working assumption rather than a confirmed fact.