Power House Exterior

The Powerhouse at the Portland Cement Works Precinct sits on the Williwa Street site in Portland, NSW, its brick walls fractured, its window openings stripped bare. What remains is the shell of a Federation-era structure built to generate electricity for one of the largest industrial complexes in regional New South Wales. The building began as two separate structures, constructed around 1902 as part of the founding phase of the Commonwealth Portland Cement Company works. By 1910 the two buildings had been joined into a single unit, with the southern end extended at the same time. An overhead gantry crane ran through the entire structure during operations. The iron girders used in its construction were imported from the same English manufacturer that supplied the Eveleigh Street Railway Yards in Sydney. Numerous internal modifications followed across the decades of operation. The Commonwealth Portland Cement Company registered in December 1900 and began cement production in 1902. By 1912 the works was producing approximately 40 per cent of all Portland cement manufactured in Australia. The complex ran its own coal mines, a private railway and tramway system, and limestone quarries, making it largely self-sufficient in energy, water, and transport. Cement production continued until November 1991, when the operation closed after nearly nine decades. The limestone quarries remained active until 1998. The NSW State Heritage Register, which listed the Portland Cement Works Precinct in 2012, notes the Powerhouse among the structures in comparatively good condition relative to other buildings across the site. That assessment makes the deterioration visible in this 2018 photograph more striking, not less. The crumbling mortar and absent glazing record what nearly three decades of disuse does even to the survivors. This photograph is part of the Portland Cement Works series.