Mystery Machine at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel skip sits on iron wheels in the centre of the turbine hall floor.
Mystery Machine at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel skip sits on iron wheels in the centre of the turbine hall floor.

Mystery Machine

Provenance

Camera
NIKON D810
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings
14mm · f/9.0 · 1/160 · ISO 100
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

An enigmatic machine occupies the former turbine hall of White Bay Power Station. Its intricate components, now coated in dust and rust, reflect the industrial decline of this historically significant site.

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

Mystery Machine at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel skip sits on iron wheels in the centre of the turbine hall floor.Mystery Machine at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel skip sits on iron wheels in the centre of the turbine hall floor.Mystery Machine at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel skip sits on iron wheels in the centre of the turbine hall floor.Mystery Machine at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel skip sits on iron wheels in the centre of the turbine hall floor.Mystery Machine at White Bay Power Station, a heavy steel skip sits on iron wheels in the centre of the turbine hall floor.
01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title
Mystery Machine
Series
White Bay Power Station
Catalogue
WBP-107
Process
Giclée
Captured
27 May 2016
Camera
NIKON D810
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture
f/9.0
Shutter
1/160 s
ISO
100
Focal length
14 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

A piece of unidentified industrial machinery at White Bay Power Station sits in one of the side bays of the plant, the steel-framed unit bolted to a concrete pad with the drive end on one side and the working end on the other. The unit is roughly the size of a small car, with the casing painted in the standard pale industrial green of the plant. Cabling, pipework, and small instrumentation lines run off the unit in several directions. A manufacturer's nameplate on the side carries the specifications, but the lettering is too faded to read clearly in the photograph. The function of the machine is not immediately identifiable from its external form alone.

Power stations of White Bay's scale carried hundreds of specific pieces of plant: motors, pumps, compressors, blowers, fans, mixers, separators, conditioners. Each unit served a particular function in the overall cycle, and identifying any single machine without its operating context or its nameplate is hard. The unit in this photograph ran continuously across the working life of the plant from 1917 to Christmas Day 1983. After closure it was de-energised. What it did is no longer obvious; that it did something, continuously, for decades, is the surviving fact.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A heavy steel skip sits on iron wheels in the centre of the turbine hall floor. Its hopper is tipped upward, locked at an angle, the tilting mechanism rusted solid. Flakes of corrosion and coal dust coat every surface. Behind it, multi-storey steel-framed windows stretch floor to ceiling, filling the hall with cold blue light. Grit covers the concrete. Steel railings line a mezzanine to the left. Overhead, a gantry crane tracks the length of the ceiling.

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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