Power House East Facing Exterior

The Power House at Portland Cement Works Precinct sits near the centre of the processing and administrative area on Williwa Street, Portland. Its eastern facade is what this photograph records: a broad industrial wall marked by rust staining and peeling paint, surfaces worked over by decades of weather and disuse. The building dates to around 1902, constructed as part of the original plant built under the direction of Dr August Wilhelm Karl Scheidel for the Commonwealth Portland Cement Company. What stands today is not quite what was first built. The Power House began as two separate structures. By 1910, they had been joined into a single unit, with the southern end extended at the same time. During its working life, an overhead gantry crane ran through the full length of the building. Iron girders were imported from the same English manufacturer that supplied the Eveleigh Street Railway Yards. Numerous internal modifications were made across the operational period. The Commonwealth Portland Cement Company registered in December 1900 and commenced cement production in 1902 under the "Union" brand. At its peak in 1911, the works employed 608 people, and by 1912 was producing approximately 40% of all Portland cement manufactured in Australia. The Power House was part of the infrastructure that kept that operation running through nine decades of production. Cement manufacturing at the site ceased in November 1991. The limestone quarries stayed open, supplying crushing material to the Maldon works, until 1998. The Portland Cement Works Precinct was added to the NSW State Heritage Register in August 2012 as item 01739, recognised across all seven significance criteria. What the 2018 photograph shows is the building in its post-industrial state: walls bearing the accumulated marks of the years since the plant went quiet. The rust stains and peeling paint are not dramatic; they are simply the record of time passing on a structure that was built to work, not to last idle.