Bunker to Wet Section Conveyor

Twin conveyor belts run parallel through the length of this hall at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, the left feeding raw coal toward the briquette factory, the right toward the power station. Light from windows at both sides and the far end cuts through the space and throws the overhead pipes and structural beams into silhouette. A rectangular control panel with red switches sits on the right wall. The central path between the belts is thick with fallen debris. The separation of the two belts is the whole point of the room, each line fed from a different bunker.

That split came from a problem found only after the briquette factory began operating. The Morwell brown coal proved unsuitable for briquetting, with a high alkali and sulphur content, so Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed the Morwell briquette factories. The briquetting presses themselves were supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract, two factories rated at 2,100 tons a day. The plant survives as the only remaining intact assemblage of mid-twentieth-century briquetting machinery in Victoria. Brett photographed the bunker to wet section conveyor on 30 March 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.