Engineers Office

The engineer's office at Wangi Power Station is a small room in the administration block, with a single window looking south across the plant. In this photograph, late-afternoon sunlight comes in through the window at a steep angle, picking out the surfaces of a timber desk, a swivel chair, and a wall of framed certificates and engineering drawings. The light falls in long bands across the floor. Dust drifts visible in the beam. The room is otherwise unremarkable: institutional carpet, painted plasterboard walls, a built-in bookshelf opposite the desk that still holds a few technical reference volumes. The window has not been opened in years.

Each generation shift at Wangi was overseen by a duty engineer who worked from this office. The engineer was responsible for the operational decisions that the control room operators carried out. The chair in this photograph is theirs. The bookshelf, the certificates, the wall calendar all belong to the decades of engineers who held the post at Wangi between 1958 and 1986. After the plant closed, the office was emptied of personal effects but the furniture and reference materials were largely left in place. The light coming through the window in this photograph is the same light those engineers worked under, on hundreds of identical late afternoons.