Port Kembla Sunset

A tall stack rises against the last of the light at BlueScope Port Kembla, smoke pouring from its top and drifting south across the plant skyline. The works sit on the Illawarra coastal plain south of Wollongong with the escarpment behind them, and at this hour the structures read as silhouette while the smoke takes the colour of the sky. The photograph was made on 27 August 2016. Port Kembla is not a closed site and never has been. Construction began in 1926 under Hoskins Iron and Steel Co. Ltd, around a blast furnace designed by Freyn Engineering of Chicago. Charles Hoskins, who had bought the land from the Wentworth Estate and staked the family business on the project, died in February 1926, before any iron was made. No. 1 blast furnace was blown in on 29 August 1928 and lit by his widow, Emily Hoskins, at a ceremony described at the time as being "of the most practical character". The furnace carried her name. Australian Iron and Steel Ltd was formed that same year with Dorman Long, Baldwins and Howard Smith as partners, and the works became a BHP subsidiary in 1935. BlueScope Steel has operated the plant since 2002. Six blast furnaces were built on the site between 1928 and 1996. By 1973 the works were making more than four million tonnes of steel a year with a workforce above 20,000, and the site remains Australia's largest crude steel plant, spread across 760 hectares. When this frame was made, No. 5 blast furnace was carrying the load and No. 6 had been mothballed since 2011. BlueScope has since approved a $1.15 billion reline of No. 6, expected to finish in mid-2026, while No. 5 is scheduled for retirement by 2030. The smoke in the photograph is the ordinary evidence of a plant that has not stopped since 1928.