Bunker Conveyor

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 1/5 · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

One of two bunker conveyors in the raw coal bunker at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. This conveyor fed coal to the power station via a shuttle conveyor on the level above, its rollers heavy with rust beside a grate walkway and a wall of multi-paned windows. The parallel conveyor that served briquette production ran out of frame to the left.

Edition

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Bunker Conveyor
Series: Morwell Power Station
Catalogue: MPS-011
Process: Giclée
Captured: 30 March 2017
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1/5 s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Morwell, Victoria, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Morwell, Victoria, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

One of two bunker conveyors in the raw coal bunker at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. This conveyor fed coal to the power station by way of a shuttle conveyor on the level above. A metal grate walkway runs the length of the structure beside it, flanked by roller assemblies heavy with rust. A row of large multi-paned windows lines the right wall, their glass grimy enough to diffuse the incoming light into a broad, flat wash across the steel. A Stop sign stays fixed to the conveyor framework in the mid-ground. The conveyor serving briquette production ran parallel to this one, out of frame to the left.

Coal entered the complex from the west and was distributed from here either to the power station or to the briquette factories, with electricity and briquettes leaving from the eastern side. The dredgers and conveyors that moved the brown coal were Australian-built, to a design derived from Yallourn, while only the briquette presses came from Germany. The conveyor running from the open cut to the briquette works was designed in 1948 as the longest of its kind in Australia at the time, over 4,000 feet, about three-quarters of a mile. Brett photographed the bunker conveyor on 30 March 2017, in the closed complex before the demolition program began.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A steel-grate maintenance walkway runs the full length of the conveyor gallery, narrowing to a vanishing point deep inside the structure. To the left, heavy rubber belt sits slack across troughing idlers, coated in coal dust and corrosion. Yellow paint peels from the support frame. Large multi-pane windows line the right wall, diffusing grey light across the metal surfaces. The air looks thick. Everything carries a film of fine brown grit.

Brett Patman

The series

Morwell Power Station

1949-2014 · 79 photographs

The State Electricity Commission of Victoria built Morwell as the centrepiece of its postwar plan to sever Victoria's reliance on black coal from New South Wales. Construction ran from 1949 to 1959; electricity production commenced in December 1958 and the first commercial briquettes followed in December 1959. With the demolition of Old Yallourn between 1995 and 1999, Morwell became the earliest surviving large-scale Victorian state-grid power station, registered on the Victorian Heritage Register as H2377 on 1 March 2018.

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.