Roto Feeder

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
Settings: 51mm · f/13.0 · 0.8s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A disused Roto Feeder stands silent inside the abandoned Bradmill Denim factory. Rust colours the heavy machinery, a relic from textile manufacturing in Footscray.

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

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

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Roto Feeder
Series: Bradmill Denim
Catalogue: BDE-022
Process: Giclée
Captured: 18 March 2012
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
Aperture: f/13.0
Shutter: 0.8s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 51 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Yarraville, Victoria, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Yarraville, Victoria, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

A disused Roto Feeder stands inside one of the buildings at Bradmill, Yarraville. The feeder is heavy industrial machinery, painted in the original maker's livery, now worked through to bare steel in patches. The drive motor sits coupled to the feed mechanism through a reduction gearbox. The unit fed cotton through the early stages of the spinning process when the plant was running.

Bradmill at Yarraville processed 40,000 bales of cotton a year at peak operation. The Roto Feeder was part of the upstream handling equipment that moved cotton from the bales through to the spinning floor. Bradmill Industries Ltd was Australia's largest textile manufacturer in the 1970s. The Yarraville site was pushed into receivership in the early 2000s under cheap-import pressure and shuttered around 2002. The 18.7-hectare site is being redeveloped as Bradmill Yarraville.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A Babcock Detroit Roto-Feeder sits square in the frame, its cast iron face blackened with decades of coal dust and heat scale. The inspection door hangs open on corroded hinges, revealing nothing but darkness inside the firebox. Rust bleeds orange across the lower panels. Valve handles, bolts, and small gauge housings crowd the surface. A coal hopper descends from above. Every surface carries a thick film of soot and grease.

Brett Patman

The series

Bradmill Denim

2011 · 27 photographs

The Bradford family founded Bradford Cotton Mills in Sydney in 1927. The company expanded into Victoria in 1940, began producing denim in 1945, and grew into Bradmill Industries Ltd. The Yarraville factory on Francis Street was the country's only indigo denim mill.

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.