Turbine Floor

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 1.3s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The turbine floor at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, with graffiti across the turbine casings, a corrugated metal control booth at centre, and a Danger 400 volts sign hanging above it beneath the exposed truss ceiling. The turbines were Metropolitan-Vickers back-pressure machines from the 1950 contract, with a condensing turbine added in 1954.

Edition

Open edition

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Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 10 to 20 business days (framed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Turbine Floor
Series: Morwell Power Station
Catalogue: MPS-038
Process: Giclée
Captured: 14 April 2017
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1.3s 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 words She is just not with you are painted across the left-hand turbine casing in the turbine hall at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, with Sucks marked on the casing opposite. A corrugated metal control booth occupies the centre of the floor, its single window facing a tangle of pipes and platform walkways at multiple levels. A Danger 400 volts sign hangs from a support beam directly above the booth, fixed to the steel framework beneath the exposed truss ceiling. The floor is layered and busy with plant, the booth a small enclosed point among the open steel and pipework around it.

The turbines on this floor were the heart of the power station, supplied under the 1950 contract as two 30,000-kilowatt back-pressure turbo-generators from Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Export Co. Ltd. of Manchester, with feed-heating plant, and joined in the 1954 revised plan by a 20 MW low-pressure condensing turbine. They were erected in part by about 250 single British men who came to Australia as assisted migrants from 1951 to install the British engineering equipment. The complex's last boiler and turbine were taken off on 8 September 2014. Brett photographed the turbine floor on 14 April 2017, in the closed complex before the demolition program began.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Four turbo-alternator units sit in two rows, their cylindrical steel casings grey with dust. A narrow central gantry runs between them, yellow safety railings on both sides. Below, a tangle of pipework drops into the basement level. Copper, green, grey. Rust blooms across valve housings and flanges. Concrete walls rise to steel roof trusses high above. Red danger signs hang from the overhead crane rail. The air is still and dry.

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.