Hammer Mills

The 'N°4 hammer mill' nameplate sits on the face of the closest machine, its cast lettering standing out against heavy rust and a large bolted access panel. These hammer mills crushed return coal too large to pass through the shaker screens above, sending the milled material back up to the wet section's top floor before transfer to the briquette factory. Dust and fine debris spread across the concrete floor toward a corridor where a white door closes off the far end of the hall. A sliver of natural light from a single window between the first and second mills is the only break in the otherwise flat industrial interior at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories.

The hammer mills and shaker screens they served are part of the briquetting assemblage that the Victorian Heritage Register names the only remaining intact set of mid twentieth century briquetting machinery in Victoria. The briquetting presses these lines fed 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. Morwell brown coal proved unsuitable for briquetting, with high alkali and sulphur content, so Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed the factories. The line ran continuously until the final briquette feed in August 2014. Brett photographed the hammer mills on 15 April 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.