Grinding Shop

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 0.4s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The form grinding shop at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, where magnetic-bed grinders reshaped worn stamps and forms from the briquette presses. The nearest machine carries an accordion-pleated cover over its sliding bed. At peak production the shop ran from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM to keep both factories supplied with serviceable stamps.

Edition

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Grinding Shop
Series: Morwell Power Station
Catalogue: MPS-062
Process: Giclée
Captured: 15 April 2017
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 0.4s 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

Form grinders line the workshop floor at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. Their magnetic beds and profiled grinding wheels were used to reshape worn stamps and forms from the briquette presses. The accordion-pleated cover on the nearest machine shields the sliding bed mechanism, which moved back and forth across each job to restore the stamp profile. Each stamp was a paired top and bottom that pressed 6 flutes per cycle, and where coal carried a high content of abrasive ash or sand, stamps wore out in as little as 2 days. At peak production the grinding shop ran continuously from 7:00 AM until 11:00 PM to keep both factories supplied.

The stamps and forms reground here belonged to the briquetting presses, supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract for two factories rated at 2,100 tons per day. SECV chief engineer Ernest Bate had ordered the briquette plant from Germany from 1949. The Morwell brown coal proved unsuitable for briquetting because of high alkali and sulphur content, so Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed the factories. First commercial briquettes came in December 1959, and the presses ran on until the final briquette feed in August 2014. Brett photographed the grinding shop on 15 April 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Heavy milling machines line the workshop floor, their cast-iron beds thick with grease and grit. Green-tinted windows run the length of the left wall. Pale daylight pushes through tall steel-framed panes on the right, catching the dust on every surface. Overhead, conduit and pipework hang from a low concrete ceiling. A red fire extinguisher stands among the machinery. Timber pallets sit stacked near the entrance. The air looks dense, close, still.

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.