Bailey Meters

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 24mm · f/8.0 · 10s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A bank of Bailey Meter instruments at White Bay Power Station in Rozelle. The far-left dial hangs open on its hinge, marked -200 to 200 and exposing the gears behind the face, while three more stay shut under glass, each stamped BAILEY METER, their circular charts holding faint red ink, one crisp and one faded almost to nothing. Below the row, three toggle switches labelled FEED PUMP sit on a discoloured control panel.

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.

$100.00 AUD

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

Bailey Meters at White Bay Power Station, black-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Bailey Meters at White Bay Power Station, raw timber-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Bailey Meters at White Bay Power Station, glass print displayed in situ on a wall.

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Bailey Meters
Series: White Bay Power Station
Catalogue: WBP-006
Process: Giclée
Captured: 13 November 2015
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 10s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 24 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 297 × 210 mm
Location: Rozelle, 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

Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

A bank of Bailey meters at White Bay Power Station is set into one of the control panels, each meter a circular dial face housed in a brass-rimmed cabinet. The dials are calibrated in the units the operators read: pressure, flow, temperature, level. Each meter carries a hand-painted label above its face naming the parameter it monitored. The needles sit at the positions they were in when the plant shut down on Christmas Eve 1983. The Bailey Meter Company supplied instrumentation to industrial plants worldwide through most of the twentieth century; their meters were a standard fit-out for British-empire municipal generating stations of White Bay's era. The brass has darkened with patina. The faces are mostly clear.

White Bay Power Station was built by the NSW Government Railways and Tramways from 1912 onwards and operated from 1917 until Christmas Eve 1983. The Bailey meters in this photograph were among the instruments operators read continuously through every operating shift. After closure, the meters were left in place because they were small, integrated with the panels behind them, and not worth the cost of individual removal. The needles have stayed put since the last reading.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A slow and steady record of movement, measured in thousand-pound hours. The Bailey metres once tracked the rhythm of White Bay Power Station’s feed water pumps, their inked needles gliding over spinning paper, translating power into a tangible record of time.

Brett Patman

The series

White Bay Power Station

2015–2018 · 124 photographs

Bricklayers laid 3.7 million bricks at White Bay across three and a quarter years of Phase 1 construction, on Wanngal Country at the western edge of Rozelle. The New South Wales Government Railways ran the build through its own Construction Department. By 3 July 1913, boilers and alternators were running before the buildings that housed them were complete.

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.