Turbine

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 1/60 · ISO 64
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A wind turbine turns above the central shack at Tin City, its blades blurred against an overcast sky, while a satellite dish and television aerial rise from the shack to the right and a water tank sits on a timber stand above the shack to the left. The corrugated iron walls carry patches of rust in several shades of orange and grey, no two panels quite matching. Footprints and tufts of grass mark the wind-blown sand in the foreground. Eleven shacks remain here, occupied under licence within the Worimi Conservation Lands.

Edition

Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

Limited edition
A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

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Colour

Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 5 to 10 business days (unframed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

Turbine at Tin City, black-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Turbine at Tin City, raw timber-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Turbine at Tin City, glass print displayed in situ on a wall.

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Turbine
Series: Tin City
Catalogue: TCI-022
Process: Giclée
Captured: 31 January 2018
Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1/60 s
ISO: 64
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 297 × 210 mm
Location: Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

A small wind turbine sits on a galvanised pole behind one of the Tin City shacks, the blades spinning in the southerly that runs up the dune face most afternoons. The pole is guyed to anchor points set into the sand. The turbine itself is a domestic-scale unit, the kind that produces a few hundred watts in a steady wind. Cabling runs from the head of the pole down to a junction box on the side of the shack. The blades catch the late-afternoon light against the dune ridge behind. Sand has built up around the base of the pole in a small mound.

Tin City has no mains power. The shacks run on whatever each owner has installed, which is typically a combination of solar panels, small wind generators, and gas. The wind on the Stockton Bight is steady and strong from the south through most of the year, which makes a small turbine a reasonable supplement to solar on overcast days and through the night. The systems are sized for the shacks' actual loads: lights, a fan, a small fridge, a radio. The 11 remaining shacks are administered under licences that prohibit the construction of new structures and any rebuilding after destruction, but the day-to-day work of keeping the existing shacks habitable continues.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Sand pushes against the base of a corrugated iron shack, burying the lower wall panels. Mismatched sheets of grey, green and rust-streaked iron are patched together across the façade. A small wind turbine spins on a pole above the roofline, its blades blurred. A satellite dish and TV antenna share the same mast. Behind, a second structure of weathered timber and iron sits on low stilts. Tufts of coastal grass bend flat across the dune. The sky is overcast, colourless.

Brett Patman

The series

Tin City

2018 · 37 photographs

Two tin sheds were put up on the Stockton Bight dunes in the late nineteenth century to hold provisions for sailors shipwrecked on the beach. During the Great Depression a group of squatters built a series of shacks around them. The settlement that grew became Tin City, on Worimi country, in the largest mobile coastal sand mass in the Southern Hemisphere.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

The anatomy view shows what this finish is as a physical object: paper margin, mat band, frame depth, acrylic profile. The comparison strip shows how each size sits relative to the others at true scale. Click a size or a finish to update both.