Raw Coal Bunker

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 4s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The power coal bunker at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, photographed from below the conveyor roller that fed coal into the hoppers beneath. Yellow-painted structural beams, thickly coated in decades of coal dust, frame a deep V-shaped chute dropping into shadow. Each bunker held around 3,000 ton of coal before transfer to the wet section. The briquette coal bunker sits out of frame to the left.

Edition

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Raw Coal Bunker
Series: Morwell Power Station
Catalogue: MPS-019
Process: Giclée
Captured: 30 March 2017
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 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

The power coal bunker at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories is photographed from below the conveyor roller that fed coal into the hoppers underneath. Yellow-painted structural beams, thickly coated in decades of coal dust, frame a deep V-shaped chute that drops into shadow beneath the roller. Each bunker held around 3,000 ton of coal before transfer to the wet section for further processing. The briquette coal bunker sits out of frame to the left. The view looks straight up into the underside of the feed, where the chute narrows and the dust has built into a dark coat over every surface the coal once passed.

The bunker was part of the coal-handling system that distributed brown coal across the complex. Coal was brought in from the west and sent to either the power station or the briquette factories, with electricity or briquettes leaving from the eastern side. The dredgers and conveyors that moved it were Australian-built, to a Yallourn-derived design, with the German supply chain limited to the briquette presses. Briquette flow ran continuously through the multi-level factories until the 2014 closure. Brett photographed the power coal bunker on 30 March 2017.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A massive steel drum roller sits at the top of the coal bunker, mounted between two heavy guide chutes coated in grime and mineral residue. Below it, the structure drops away into darkness. Steel crossbeams and support frames recede downward. The walls are thick with yellowed builite and coal dust. Pale light filters through high windows, catching the edges of overhead gantries and pipework.

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.