Clinker Shed

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 20s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The clinker shed at Kandos Cement Works, Kandos, central west NSW. Overhead conveyors once rained hot clinker from the kilns onto the floor below, filling the air with dust and heat. The shed stood empty after Cement Australia closed the plant in September 2011.

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.

See certificate sample →

Shipping Free shipping over $250. Ships worldwide, rates calculated at checkout.

Returns Damaged in transit? We replace it. Full policy →

Ships within 10 business days · signed & numbered

In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Clinker Shed
Series: Kandos Cement Works
Catalogue: KCW-006
Process: Giclée
Captured: 13 February 2016
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 20s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Kandos, New South Wales, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Kandos, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The clinker shed at Kandos Cement Works is a long steel-clad building that held the kiln output between the kiln cooler and the cement mills. The shed has a high pitched roof in corrugated iron, supported on lattice steel trusses, with a clerestory running the length of the apex. The floor is open concrete, with a track and chute system overhead for moving clinker through the building. Mounds and ridges of unswept clinker remain in places along the floor, a dark grey rubble that catches the dust-filtered light coming through the roof. Steel doors at both ends are partly open. The shed runs long enough that the far end disappears into shadow.

Clinker is the lumpy intermediate product that emerges from a rotary kiln at around 1,400 degrees Celsius and is cooled before it goes to the cement mills for grinding. Storage sheds like this one buffered the kilns from the mills, so that the kilns could run continuously while the mills worked through the output at their own pace. The Kandos plant ran two production circuits from 1916 onwards, expanded in stages, and produced cement for major Sydney construction projects, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge between 1928 and 1932. The kilns shut down with the rest of the plant in September 2011. The clinker still on the floor of the shed has not been touched since.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Steel trusses span the full width of the shed, supported by heavy columns streaked with rust. Corrugated iron walls and roofing close the space in on all sides. Light enters low through open doorways at the far end, falling across a thick layer of grit and dust that covers the ground. The air looks dense. Everything is coated in the same pale grey residue.

Brett Patman

The series

Kandos Cement Works

2016 · 40 photographs

The town's first name was Candos, an acronym of the directors' surnames at the NSW Cement Lime and Coal Company. They bought 100 acres from local farmer John Lloyd Junior for £2,000 in 1913 and had surveyor James Dawson lay out the township. The Postmaster General ruled the name change to Kandos in 1915, and by August 1916 the kilns at the new cement works were firing.

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.