Rising Conveyor

A diagonal conveyor runs at full height across the multi-storey brick facade of Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, its corrugated roof worn and one window panel left open. The conveyor once fed coal, processed in the wet section, through to the briquette factory, and required daily cleaning to prevent fire hazards. On Boxing Day 2003, coal dust ignited on the third floor of A factory, and the blast spread to the fine coal bunkers before reaching B factory. The damage was never repaired. The conveyor is left coated in decades of grime, still angled toward a production line that no longer runs, its frame holding the same diagonal it held in service.

This conveyor fed the briquetting line, carrying coal from the wet section through to the presses supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract. The Boxing Day 2003 fire destroyed the coal cross-over conveyor feeding the B, C and D briquette plants. Only A plant continued, and the complex then ran at a fraction of its intended capacity. The Victorian Heritage Register records the plant as the only remaining intact assemblage of mid-twentieth-century briquetting machinery in Victoria. Final briquette feed came in August 2014, with the last boiler and turbine taken off on 8 September 2014. Brett photographed the rising conveyor on 14 April 2017.