Top of the Bunker

The view runs directly down the conveyor corridor from the very top floor of the raw coal bunker at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, toward the open cut beyond. The name Dean is spray-painted in black across a large white-painted panel on the left conveyor structure, the only mark left on this level. Multi-tiered grate walkways and staircases step down through the frame, and a large multi-paned window on the far right wall throws cold light across rusted steel handrails and mesh flooring. The corridor is long and narrow, all steel grate and conveyor framing, built for coal to move through rather than for people to linger.

Coal was conveyed from the west into the site and distributed to either the power station or the briquette factories, with electricity or briquettes leaving from the eastern side. 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. The dredgers and conveyors were Australian-built to a Yallourn-derived design. Briquette flow ran continuously through the multi-level factories until the 2014 closure. Brett photographed the top of the bunker on 30 March 2017, in the closed complex before the demolition program began.