Power House West Interior

The Power House West interior at Portland Cement Works is a Federation-era industrial building of considerable scale. Rust has worked its way across the metalwork over the decades since production ceased, and dust has settled in a continuous layer across the concrete floor. High windows admit the only light into the space now, cutting across the silent machinery in long, fading bands. The powerhouse was originally constructed as two separate buildings, part of the plant built under the direction of Dr August Wilhelm Karl Scheidel, the German-trained metallurgist appointed to rebuild the Portland operation from 1899. By 1910 the two structures had been joined as a single unit, with the southern end extended at the same time. An overhead gantry crane ran through the full length of the building during its operational years. The iron girders were imported from the same English manufacturer that supplied the Eveleigh Street Railway Yards. The Commonwealth Portland Cement Company registered in December 1900 and began cement production in 1902. By 1904 the Lithgow Mercury described Portland as the largest cement-making plant in the Commonwealth. The works reached peak capacity of 226,796 tonnes of cement and 18,144 tonnes of lime per year by 1959, making it the dominant domestic cement producer for much of the twentieth century. Cement production at Portland Cement Works ceased in November 1991. The limestone quarries that supplied the plant continued operating until 1998, when the last quarry was decommissioned and plant dismantling began. The Portland Cement Works Precinct was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register in 2012. This photograph, made in 2018, records the Power House West interior as it stands: the machinery in place, the rust settled in, the dust undisturbed. The gantry crane is gone. The noise is gone. What remains is the structure itself, and the light still coming through those high windows.