Wet Section

Nº 5 crusher is stencilled onto a conveyor belt mechanism in the lower left, one legible marker among the layered machinery of the wet section at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. A long dark pipe runs diagonally across the frame, crossing a multi-level arrangement of parallel conveyor belts, yellow-painted platforms, and an overhead gantry structure. Tall windows line both walls, sending columns of light down through the grime and steel. The equipment is densely packed and stacked on several levels, the belts and platforms threading between one another, every surface dulled by ingrained coal dust.

This was the first-stage preparation floor of the briquette process. Raw coal passing through the wet section was broken down by hammer mills and cog roll crushers, then passed over shaker screens until pieces reached 4 millimetres or finer before moving on to the briquette factory. The Morwell brown coal proved unsuitable for briquetting, with high alkali and sulphur content, so Yallourn coal was railed across the interconnecting line to feed this machinery. The Victorian Heritage Register lists wet sections, hammer mills, shaker screens and conveyor cascades like these as the only remaining intact assemblage of mid-twentieth-century briquetting machinery in Victoria. Brett photographed the wet section on 30 March 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.