Meal Room

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 1/8 · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The production employees' meal room at Kandos Cement Works. Tables and chairs remain, covered in dust. Workers took hurried meals and coffee breaks here between shifts. The plant operated for 97 years from 1916 until Cement Australia closed it in September 2011.

Edition

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Meal Room
Series: Kandos Cement Works
Catalogue: KCW-020
Process: Giclée
Captured: 13 February 2016
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1/8 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 workers' meal room at Kandos Cement Works has been left as it was on the day of the plant's closure. A row of tables and chairs sits along one side, with stainless-steel servery counters on the opposite wall. A whiteboard shows the last roster, partially erased. Coffee cups, lunchboxes, and a few folded newspapers sit on the tables. The fluorescent lights overhead are mostly off. A clock on the wall has stopped at a specific time. The kitchen at the back has been stripped of small appliances, but the larger fixtures are still there. A handwritten note on the noticeboard advertises a leaving function.

The meal room was where the plant's workforce ate, took their breaks, and met before and after shifts. Kandos employed several hundred people at its peak, with a smaller workforce at closure. The meal room was the social centre of the plant. When Kandos Cement Works closed in September 2011, the workforce was made redundant in a single round, and the room was vacated within a few days. The whiteboard, the cups, the newspapers, and the stopped clock are not staged. They are the records of what the room looked like in the days after the workers stopped coming in.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A kitchenette lines the far wall. Laminate cabinetry, white tile splashback, a small fan sitting dead on the benchtop. A fridge stands beside a hot water unit, both unplugged. The ceiling tiles are stained grey with mould. Concrete dust coats the floor in an even film. Light enters through a timber-framed window on the left wall, diffused and flat. The air-conditioning unit above the bench hangs silent. The room smells of damp calcium and old lino.

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.