Power House Corner

The Power House corner at Portland Cement Works sits within the Processing and Administrative Precinct on Williwa Street, Portland, NSW. What stands today is a structure of crumbling concrete and rusting metal, its surfaces carrying the slow damage of decades without maintenance. Remnant machinery occupies the space, fixed in place long after the work it performed became irrelevant. The Powerhouse was originally constructed as two separate buildings, brought together as a single unit by 1910, with the southern end extended at the same time. An overhead gantry crane ran through the entire structure during its operational years. The iron girders were imported from the same English manufacturer that supplied the Eveleigh Street Railway Yards in Sydney, a detail that connects this regional industrial site to the capital's own infrastructure history. The building underwent numerous internal modifications across its working life. The wider Portland Cement Works was registered as the Commonwealth Portland Cement Company in December 1900, with cement production beginning on 4 August 1902 [verify: production start date, single source, S8]. By 1912, the company was producing approximately 40% of all Portland cement manufactured in Australia. The works operated its own coal mines, private railway, and limestone quarries, and was described in the Lithgow Mercury in May 1904 as the largest cement-making plant in the Commonwealth. Cement production ceased in November 1991, with the last limestone quarry decommissioned in 1998. The Portland Cement Works Precinct was added to the NSW State Heritage Register on 3 August 2012 (SHR #01739). The Powerhouse is rated in good structural condition relative to other buildings on the precinct. The 2018 photograph records the Power House corner as the industrial complex entered a new phase, with AWJ Civil having acquired the site in 2017 and redevelopment plans beginning to take shape around the surviving heritage fabric.