Pump House

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 21mm · f/8.0 · 3s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The pump house at White Bay Power Station, disused since the station closed in 1983. Heavy machinery and pipes lie dormant. Rusting metal colours the interior.

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

Colour

Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 5 to 10 business days (unframed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

Pump House at White Bay Power Station, black-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Pump House at White Bay Power Station, raw timber-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Pump House at White Bay Power Station, glass print displayed in situ on a wall.

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Pump House
Series: White Bay Power Station
Catalogue: WBP-056
Process: Giclée
Captured: 13 November 2015
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 3s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 21 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 297 × 210 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 pump house at White Bay Power Station sits at the seaward end of the plant, the brick-walled building that held the cooling-water circulation pumps lifting harbour water through the condenser system. The interior is a high single volume with the pump bays running along the floor, each pump on its concrete plinth with the discharge piping rising through the ceiling toward the condensers above. The walls are red brick to mid-height with concrete cladding above, broken by tall industrial windows along the seaward face that admitted both light and the working noise of the harbour beyond. Steel walkways at multiple levels access the upper sections of the pumps.

The pump house was where the cooling water for the plant's condensers was lifted from the harbour, with the working pumps each handling hundreds of thousands of litres per minute. Cooling water was the largest single utility load at White Bay, and the pump house ran continuously through every operating shift. The plant ran from 1917 to Christmas Eve 1983. After closure the pumps were shut down. Most of the larger pumps came out during the 1990s decontamination; the building, the pipework, the plinths, and several of the smaller pumps remain in place.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A long corridor runs between painted brick walls inside White Bay Power Station's pump house. Rusted pipework curves from a heavy pump assembly mounted to the left. On the right wall, rows of pressure gauges and valve controls sit bolted to a concrete panel, their faces dulled grey with grime. Broken concrete and bent steel rods jut from the floor in the foreground. Daylight enters from clerestory windows at the far end, falling pale across debris and dust.

Brett Patman

The series

White Bay Power Station

124 photographs

White Bay Power Station is a former coal-fired power station on Wanngal Country at Rozelle, at the head of White Bay on Sydney Harbour, built to power Sydney's trams and suburban trains and in service from May 1917 until December 1983. The New South Wales Department of Railways designed it in its own drawing office and began building in June 1912. The turbine hall, boilerhouse, switch house and control room stand on a 38,000 square metre site behind two steel chimney stacks, the main steelwork stamped with British manufacturers' names.

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.