Power Station Window

A window in one of the Morwell power station buildings catches the afternoon light from the south, the steel-framed glazing set into a brick wall painted SECV cream. The window is the standard mid-twentieth-century industrial type: a large fixed central pane flanked by smaller pivoting openable sashes. Several of the smaller panes have been broken; the rest carry the grime of decades of operation. The brick wall around the window shows decades of stack-emission staining, the cream weathered to mottled grey. The light through the broken panes throws geometric patterns onto the interior floor. The exterior is dust-blown.

Morwell Power Station's buildings were constructed in the standard SECV industrial idiom: brick walls, steel-framed windows, internal concrete structure carrying the heavy machinery. The complex opened in 1956 and operated continuously until its closure on 8 September 2014. The window in this photograph stayed in place through the plant's full operational life and through the closed years that followed. Brett photographed the window on 15 April 2017, on the second of two visits. The window is part of the building fabric heritage that the Victorian Heritage Database lists under place 200429.