Boiler House Control Room at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel door stands open into the control room.
Boiler House Control Room at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel door stands open into the control room.

Boiler House Control Room

Provenance

Camera
NIKON D7000
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings
21mm · f/8.0 · 0.6s · ISO 100
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

White Bay Power Station's Boiler House control room sits in silence. Decaying instruments and panels line the walls. Dust settles on consoles, their switches frozen. This space once commanded the station's immense power. Now it stands as a forgotten industrial relic.

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
Size
Type
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.
See certificate sample →

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In situ

Boiler House Control Room at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel door stands open into the control room.Boiler House Control Room at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel door stands open into the control room.Boiler House Control Room at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel door stands open into the control room.Boiler House Control Room at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel door stands open into the control room.Boiler House Control Room at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel door stands open into the control room.
01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title
Boiler House Control Room
Series
White Bay Power Station
Catalogue
WBP-019
Process
Giclée
Captured
13 November 2015
Camera
NIKON D7000
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture
f/8.0
Shutter
0.6s s
ISO
100
Focal length
21 mm
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size
290 × 200 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

The boiler house control room at White Bay Power Station sits on the operator level of the boiler hall, a smaller fitted-out room from which the boiler-house watch ran the firing across every shift. The room is walled in glazed partitions for visibility into the boiler bays, with desks at the centre of the floor and control panels along the back wall. The desks carry the residue of operating paperwork: log books, shift handover sheets, a wall-mounted clock above the desk. The control panels carry the boiler indicators: drum levels, feedwater pressures, firing rates, alarm lamps. The panels are dark; the operating power was cut on the day the plant closed.

The boiler house control room was separate from the main station control room, dedicated to the firing-level operations rather than the broader generator and grid coordination. Operators on this floor controlled coal feed rates, combustion air, drum water levels, and the response to alarms across the boiler bay. The room ran continuously across the working life of the plant from 1917 to Christmas Day 1983. After closure the room was switched off and the door locked behind the last shift. The desks and the panels are essentially as they were on the last working day.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A heavy steel door stands open into the control room. The sign reads: *Authorised Staff Only Permitted in Control Room. By Order.* Beyond it, analogue gauges, rotary switches, and hand wheels line a cream-painted instrument panel that stretches deep into the room. Dust coats the concrete floor. Low ceiling beams press the space tight. A thin wash of light enters from the left and dies halfway across the threshold.

Brett Patman

White Bay Power Station

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.

Anatomy · true ratio
07 MORE FROM WHITE BAY POWER STATION

123 other prints in this series

All prints
Control Room at White Bay Power Station, a curved control console wraps across the room in a wide arc.
Control Room $100.00
Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station, reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained.
Turbine Hall $100.00
Glass Curtain at White Bay Power Station, a towering mosaic of glass and steel, where light filters through dust-streaked.
Glass Curtain $100.00
Turbine and Condenser at White Bay Power Station, a steam turbine and its condenser sit on the operating floor of White Bay.
Turbine and Condenser $100.00
08 BY POST · NO SPAM

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