Top of Boiler

A yellow-railed steel staircase climbs the right side of a large riveted machine at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, the handrails still carrying paint over years of accumulated grime. The machine fills almost the full floor-to-ceiling height of the space, its riveted panels and valve fittings intact but long idle. Gridded windows run along the left wall, casting even light across the patterned concrete floor and picking out rust streaks on the overhead I-beams and exposed pipework. The scene is spare and stripped back, machinery and structure and nothing else, with the staircase the only line through it.

The boilers here were water tube boilers specifically adapted for burning brown coal, raising steam from Latrobe Valley lignite to drive the station's turbines. The Victorian Heritage Register cites them as rare survivors of their class. The boiler plant, ash handling, steel chimneys and building were supplied by Mitchell Engineering Group Ltd. of London under the 1950 contract, part of a postwar push to sever the state's reliance on black coal from New South Wales. Electricity production at the complex commenced in December 1958. Brett photographed the top of the boiler on 30 March 2017, in the closed complex before the demolition program began.