Spare Parts Storage

A storage area inside the Bathurst Gasworks holds shelves of spare parts and small tools left in the position they were stored. The shelves are timber and steel, fitted to the brick wall behind. The parts on them are of the kind a coal-gas plant accumulated over decades of operation: valve internals, pipe fittings, gauge faces, instrument housings, hand tools, lengths of rod and wire. Each item carries a film of dust thick enough to obscure the original finish underneath. One of the pigeonhole compartments is labelled with a question mark. The labels on the other shelves are still legible in places, faded in others. The whole arrangement looks as if it was tidied up at the end of a shift and never disturbed again.

Plant of this scale ran on its own spares inventory. Replacement valves, gauges, packing, gland seals, and fittings had to be on hand because shutting down a retort house mid-cycle was costly and slow. The Bathurst Gasworks operated continuously from 1888 to 1987 across two ownership arrangements: council coal-gas production from 1888 to 1979, then AGL LPG reforming from 1979 to 1987. The spares on these shelves served the equipment over that span. The last item taken off them was used before the final shift. Everything that has been here since has been waiting for a job that did not come back.