Boiler House Cabinet

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 21mm · f/8.0 · 1/60 · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A rusted steel cabinet stands open against the brick wall of the boilerhouse at White Bay Power Station, its door held in place by decades of pigeon droppings and feathers compacted into a crust. Shafts of light cross the dust on the floor and twisted reinforcement mesh curls inward at one side. The cabinet is welded plate steel, built far heavier than the job required.

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

Boiler House Cabinet at White Bay Power Station, black-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Boiler House Cabinet at White Bay Power Station, raw timber-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Boiler House Cabinet at White Bay Power Station, glass print displayed in situ on a wall.

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Boiler House Cabinet
Series: White Bay Power Station
Catalogue: WBP-017
Process: Giclée
Captured: 13 November 2015
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1/60 s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 21 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 steel cabinet in the boiler house at White Bay Power Station holds the residue of the routine instrumentation and control equipment that served one section of the plant. The cabinet door is part open, the interior fittings visible: terminal blocks along the back wall, smaller relays and timers mounted to a panel on one side, a row of switches and indicator lamps on the inside of the door. The cabinet is painted in the pale industrial green of the broader plant. The lettering on the equipment labels is hand-painted, faded but still legible. Cabling enters the cabinet from the top through gland fittings.

Cabinets of this kind dotted White Bay's boiler house, each one serving a section of the plant: pressure switches for the steam circuit, alarm relays for the firing control, level transmitters for the feedwater header. They were the local nodes of the plant's instrumentation network, connected back to the central control room through cable runs that ran along the walkways and the structural framing. The cabinets ran continuously across the working life of the plant from 1917 to Christmas Eve 1983. After closure they were de-energised. The fittings inside the cabinet in this photograph have stayed where the last fitter left them.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A steel storage cabinet stands open against the brick exterior wall of the boiler house. Three shelves sit empty. The door hangs ajar, its hinges seized. Decades of accumulated grit and pigeon waste coat the ground beneath it, compacted to a hard grey crust. Sunlight falls in sharp angles across the brickwork and dirt floor. A single green plant pushes through the rubble near the base of the wall. Twisted reinforcement mesh leans against the corner.

Brett Patman

The series

White Bay Power Station

124 photographs

White Bay Power Station is a former coal-fired power station on Wanngal Country at Rozelle, at the head of White Bay on Sydney Harbour, built to power Sydney's trams and suburban trains and in service from May 1917 until December 1983. The New South Wales Department of Railways designed it in its own drawing office and began building in June 1912. The turbine hall, boilerhouse, switch house and control room stand on a 38,000 square metre site behind two steel chimney stacks, the main steelwork stamped with British manufacturers' names.

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.