Stairs To Level Two

A flight of worn concrete stairs runs up to the second level inside the Bathurst Gasworks. The treads are dished in the centre where decades of boots have softened the surface, and the nosing has cracked away at several points. A pile of coal is heaped to the right of the lower steps, with loose coal scattered across the treads where it has been walked through. The building floor is covered in coal on almost every level: the entire site held the granular residue of decades of feed material moving between storage, hoppers, and retorts. Metal handrails are bolted to the wall on one side, finished in flaking institutional grey paint that has dropped into a rust patina underneath.

Plant operations at the Bathurst Gasworks ran across multiple levels of the retort house. Coal was charged at one level, retorts fired at another, gas taken off above, and tar and other heavy products collected below. Operators and fitters moved between levels constantly, and stair runs like this one were the working spine of the building. The Bathurst Gasworks operated as a council facility from 1888 to 1979 and produced gas under AGL until 1987. The surviving structures date primarily from the c.1960 rebuild. The stairs have been climbed by council fitters, AGL operators, contamination assessors, and the structural engineers from WSP Australia who are still working through what to do with the building. They have not been climbed by an operator since 1987.