Hammer Mill Conveyor

Parallel rows of conveyor rollers recede the length of the wet section at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. The belts have been removed and the rollers left heavily rusted on their frames. Diamond-plate walkways flank both sides at elevation, their yellow-painted undersides still visible above the corrosion. Tall, multi-paned windows along the left wall push daylight across the brickwork and into the gallery, reaching the large dark machinery massed at the far end. The line runs straight down the hall, stripped to its steelwork.

This conveyor was part of the wet section, one stage in the briquetting cascade that the Victorian Heritage Register names the only remaining intact assemblage of mid twentieth century briquetting machinery in Victoria, with its wet sections, hammer mills, shaker screens and conveyor cascades. The briquetting presses fed by these lines were supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract for two factories rated at 2,100 tons per day. Because Morwell brown coal was unsuitable for briquetting, Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed the factories. The flow ran continuously through the multi-level factories until the 2014 closure. Brett photographed the hammer mill conveyor on 15 April 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.