Weigher Floor

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 24mm · f/8.0 · 1s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Steel structures and weighing mechanisms dominate the weigher floor within Wangi Power Station. Decades of disuse leave a patina of rust and dust across the industrial machinery. Light casts long shadows through the cavernous space.

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 10 to 20 business days (framed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Weigher Floor
Series: Wangi Power Station
Catalogue: WPS-051
Process: Giclée
Captured: 27 November 2015
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 24 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Wangi Wangi, 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

Wangi Wangi, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The weigher floor at Wangi Power Station is a steel-grating platform above the coal-handling area, where the conveyors carrying coal from the receival yard passed across a weighing station for input metering. The floor is open grating decking, the steel scuffed from foot traffic, with the load-cell mountings still in place underneath where the weigher itself sat. The weighing instrumentation has been removed; what remains is the structural arrangement and the cable runs that connected the system back to the control room. Cabling and conduit run along the steelwork in long horizontal lines. The space below the grating is the coal-handling area itself. Daylight comes through clerestory openings in the upper roof.

Coal handling at Wangi started at the receival yard, where rail and road deliveries unloaded coal into the storage area. From there, the conveyors carried the coal across the weigher to record the input quantity and then on to the storage bunkers above the boiler firing levels. The system handled approximately 1.2 million tonnes in Wangi's peak operating year of 1964. Over the full operational life of the plant, 20 million tonnes of coal passed through. The weigher floor stopped recording on 31 October 1986 when B Station closed.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A long concrete corridor stretches deep into the building, flanked by steel railings and heavy reinforced columns. Overhead, riveted steel beams and triangular bunker hoppers press low against the ceiling. Chains hang from pulleys on the right side, thick with rust. Broken glass and debris litter the walkway. Pale light enters through tall gridded windows on both sides, catching the grey dust that covers every surface.

Brett Patman

The series

Wangi Power Station

51 photographs

About a thousand men built Wangi Power Station, on the western shore of Lake Macquarie. They were Hunter Valley locals and post-war Italian migrants, many living in a tent city on the lakeshore through the build. By 1957 they'd put up the main building, 228 metres long and eleven storeys high in triple-brick over a riveted steel frame, with three 76-metre concrete chimneys behind it.

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.