Double Shaker Screens

A large weathered pulley wheel with coiled wire rope sits in the left foreground at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, anchoring a long concrete walkway lined with green-painted industrial motors that run toward the far end of the building. The wire rope drums pulled brass screen cleaners back and forth across the screens, keeping the coal-passing process clear of blockages. Diagonal shadows from the tall window panes fall hard across the floor. A yellow handrail tracks the right side of the passage past exposed brick and a white structure marked 'DSS 5'.

The shaker screens were one stage in the only remaining intact assemblage of mid-twentieth-century briquetting machinery in Victoria, which the register lists alongside the wet sections, hammer mills, conveyor cascades and raw coal bunkers. The briquetting equipment was supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract, for two factories of 2,100 tons per day. Because Morwell brown coal proved unsuitable for briquetting, Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed these screens and presses. Brett photographed the double shaker screens on 30 March 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.