Telephone Exchange

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 21mm · f/8.0 · 2s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Wiring and switchboards fill the abandoned telephone exchange inside White Bay Power Station. This vital communication hub once connected operations across the massive industrial site, now silent since its closure in 1983.

Edition

Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

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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 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: Telephone Exchange
Series: White Bay Power Station
Catalogue: WBP-040
Process: Giclée
Captured: 13 November 2015
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 2s 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: National Trust of Australia (NSW), 2016 Heritage Award, Multimedia

02 LOCATION

Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The telephone exchange at White Bay Power Station occupies a small room near the main control area, fitted out with the racks and switchboards that handled the plant's internal communications. Pale green steel cabinets line one wall, mounted with rotary switches, jack fields, and small indicator lamps. A pair of operator desks sits in front of the cabinets, each desk fitted with a headset cable and a row of patch leads still in place. The switchboards date from a postwar refit; the original 1917 exchange equipment was replaced as the plant's communications requirements grew. The flooring is composite tile, the lighting fluorescent overhead.

Power stations of White Bay's scale ran their own internal telephone systems, with extensions to every control area, workshop, and office across the plant. The exchange in this photograph routed those calls and connected the plant to the broader Sydney telephone network. The exchange ran continuously through every operating shift across the plant's working life from 1917 to Christmas Day 1983. After closure the exchange was switched off. The switchboards stayed in place because they were heavy and integrated. The patch leads are still where the last operator left them.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

The timber-encased telephone exchange stands at the heart of the White Bay Power Station control room, a relic of analog communication that once linked this facility to substations and power stations across Sydney. Operators would have stood here, plugging and unplugging lines, routing conversations with the precision that modern systems have long since automated.

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.