Vanishing Conveyor

The number 39 is stencilled on the conveyor structure at left, where a yellow safety rail runs toward the transfer station at the far end of the riser gallery at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. A large grey pipe runs the full length of the right-hand wall, and a red hose reel hangs in the mid-ground. Light enters from the distant opening, laying horizontal bands across the concrete floor beneath exposed timber trusses and corrugated iron roofing. The gallery is long and narrow, the conveyor line drawing back to a single bright point at its end, the structure plain and utilitarian along its full length.

This riser connected the floor levels of one of the briquette factories, carrying material between the multi-level stages of the process. The briquetting equipment in these factories was supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract, with two factories rated at 2,100 tons per day. Because Morwell brown coal proved unsuitable for briquetting, with high alkali and sulphur content, Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed the presses here. The Victorian Heritage Register lists the plant as the only remaining intact assemblage of mid-twentieth-century briquetting machinery in Victoria. Brett photographed the riser conveyor gallery on 30 March 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.