Screening

The steel screening structure in this photograph sorted crushed dolerite aggregate at Hornsby Quarry, part of a processing operation that supplied blue metal for road construction across northern Sydney for close to a century. The framework is heavy gauge and functional, built to handle the weight and abrasion of rock moving through it continuously. By 2015, when this photograph was made, the structure had been idle for more than a decade. Hornsby Quarry sits within a Jurassic diatreme in Old Mans Valley, off Quarry Road, Hornsby. The diatreme is the largest volcanic neck in the Sydney area, its dolerite intruding through sandstone deposits of the Sydney Basin. Quarrying of that dolerite for road aggregate began around 1905 under the Higgins family, who had farmed and timbered the valley from the 1830s. Hornsby Shire Council purchased the operation in 1912, recognising the strategic value of local volcanic rock for building and maintaining road networks across the shire. Operations passed through several operators over the following decades. Hornsby Blue Metal Limited held the quarry from 1924 to 1932. Farley and Lewers restarted extraction in 1959. CSR Limited acquired Farley and Lewers in 1980, and the operation continued under CSR Construction Materials until quarrying ceased in 2002. At peak extraction the site processed approximately 110,000 tonnes of dolerite per year. The remnant crusher and screening plant buildings were noted in Hornsby Shire Council's master plan as heritage features to be retained within the redeveloped Hornsby Park. This photograph records the screening structure as it stood in the years between closure and rehabilitation, the steel framework still holding its form, the rock dust still on its surfaces, the process it was built for long since stopped.