Entertainment Hall Seating

A long timber bench runs along the wall of the entertainment hall at White Bay Power Station, the seat hardwood and the back fixed to the wall behind. The bench is unbroken across most of the wall length, with a small gap at each side where a doorway opens through the wall. The hardwood has darkened with age and accumulated dust. The cushion that may once have covered the bench is gone; the underlying timber carries the wear pattern of decades of working-shift social use. The wall behind the bench is concrete, painted institutional cream, with a row of timber-framed windows above the bench at eye level.

The entertainment hall at White Bay served the plant's workforce, which peaked at around 500 to 600 people across multiple shifts. The hall held after-shift functions, union meetings, retirement parties, and the regular social events that were a fixture of large industrial workforces in the mid-twentieth century. The bench in this photograph was where workers sat through those events. White Bay closed on Christmas Eve 1983 and the hall stopped being used for its original purpose. The site has been opened to the public occasionally since, including for the 2024 Biennale of Sydney.