Cement Mill Floor

The floor of one of the cement mills at Kandos has built up over the decades into a landscape of cement-dust spires. The dust accumulated under the mill while it was running, then hardened in place over the years since closure. The spires are fragile but solid, ranging from low mounds to columns that come up to chest height. The colour is pale grey, almost white in places. Moisture cycles have set the surface into a slightly crystalline pattern. The light coming through high clerestory windows above catches the spires from the side. The whole floor reads as a slow-grown stalagmite field at industrial scale.

A cement mill grinds clinker into the fine powder that becomes finished cement. The mills run continuously while the plant is operating; some of the powder escapes the grinding circuit through joins and seals and settles on the floor underneath. At Kandos the mill ran for decades. Cleaning crews brought the dust under control during operation, but in the years since the plant closed in September 2011 the floor has been left to itself. What is in this photograph is not active production residue. It is the slow accretion of escaped material, hardened by humidity, taking a form that nobody specifically intended. Cement dust does this when it is not interfered with: it slowly turns back into something that looks like rock.