Point to Point

One of the rising conveyors at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories runs diagonally across the sky, photographed from below at an angle that emphasises its climb. Corrugated iron cladding, streaked with rust, encloses the upper section. A row of small rectangular windows runs the length of the enclosed run, several left partially open. Concrete supports anchor the structure to the ground below, still intact beneath the weathered shell. The cladding is the only thing that has failed. The frame it covers holds its line, carrying the conveyor's path up toward the power station bunker it once fed.

This conveyor belonged to the coal-handling system that moved brown coal across the complex. Coal was brought in from the west and distributed to either the power station or the briquette factories, with electricity or briquettes leaving from the eastern side. The dredgers and conveyors were Australian-built, to a design derived from Yallourn, while the German supply chain covered only the briquette presses. The coal conveyor from the open cut to the briquette works was designed in 1948 as the longest of its kind in Australia at the time, over 4,000 feet, about three-quarters of a mile. Brett photographed the rising conveyor on 15 April 2017.