Lunch Room at White Bay Power Station, a timber church pew sits against a wall of broken windows in a narrow brick corridor.
Lunch Room at White Bay Power Station, a timber church pew sits against a wall of broken windows in a narrow brick corridor.

Lunch Room

Provenance

Camera
NIKON D7000
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings
21mm · f/8.0 · 13s · ISO 100
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A wooden pew in the workers' lunch room, its surface worn smooth by years of use between shifts. Shattered windows look out toward the industrial core of the station behind. White Bay ran continuously from 1917 to 1983, staffed on rotating shifts throughout.

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.
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In situ

Lunch Room at White Bay Power Station, a timber church pew sits against a wall of broken windows in a narrow brick corridor.Lunch Room at White Bay Power Station, a timber church pew sits against a wall of broken windows in a narrow brick corridor.Lunch Room at White Bay Power Station, a timber church pew sits against a wall of broken windows in a narrow brick corridor.Lunch Room at White Bay Power Station, a timber church pew sits against a wall of broken windows in a narrow brick corridor.Lunch Room at White Bay Power Station, a timber church pew sits against a wall of broken windows in a narrow brick corridor.
01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title
Lunch Room
Series
White Bay Power Station
Catalogue
WBP-053
Process
Giclée
Captured
13 November 2015
Camera
NIKON D7000
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture
f/8.0
Shutter
13s 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 lunch room at White Bay Power Station is a fitted-out space off the main working corridor, with long tables down the centre, bench seating along the walls, and a servery counter along the back wall. The tables are timber-topped on steel underframes, scuffed and scarred from decades of working-shift meals. The bench seating is fixed, the upholstery cracked at the seams. The servery counter is stainless-steel, with the bain marie wells empty and the heat lamps above them dark. A noticeboard on one wall holds the residue of working pinned-up notices: shift rosters, union announcements, safety bulletins, a faded photograph of a previous works social event.

White Bay's lunch room served the workforce of around 500 to 600 across shift breaks: hot meals from the kitchen, brought to the room for service. The lunch room ran continuously across the working life of the plant from 1917 to Christmas Day 1983. After closure the room was vacated. The tables, the benches, and the servery have stayed in place. The noticeboard residue records the social and operational life of the workforce in the years leading up to closure. The site has been opened occasionally for arts and film since, including the 2024 Biennale of Sydney.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A timber church pew sits against a wall of broken windows in a narrow brick corridor. Light falls through the fractured glass, catching dust on every surface. Rust bleeds down from steel ceiling beams, staining the brickwork in long orange streaks. Debris covers the concrete floor. Through the windows, the green steel framework of the turbine hall is visible.

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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