Reactor Room

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/9.0 · 8s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The reactor room at White Bay Power Station, a corridor of empty housings repeating in rigid formation into the dim distance. Steel and concrete frames are all that remain of what stood in them; the equipment came out when the site was stripped in the 1990s. Light reaches in from the far end and leaves the rest of the corridor in shadow.

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

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

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

Reactor Room at White Bay Power Station, glass print displayed in situ on a wall.

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Reactor Room
Series: White Bay Power Station
Catalogue: WBP-110
Process: Giclée
Captured: 27 May 2016
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter: 8s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 14 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 reactor room at White Bay Power Station holds a row of oil-immersed current-limiting reactors in steel tank housings, each unit mounted on a concrete plinth with the oil-fill cap and drain valve visible on the side. The tanks are painted dark grey, the same industrial finish as the switchgear in the adjacent switch house. Porcelain insulators are fitted to the terminals at the top of each tank. Copper buswork connects the units to the busbar runs running overhead. The room has a concrete floor with oil-containment kerbing around the plinth bases. The ceiling carries cable trays and steel conduit runs.

Current-limiting reactors at White Bay Power Station were used to control fault current on the high-voltage busbars. The switch house reactors were part of the protective system that kept the station's output stable as the load on the tram and rail network varied through the day. White Bay supplied Sydney's tram and suburban rail network from 1917 and transitioned to supplying the wider NSW electricity grid after 1958. The switch house and its associated equipment dated across the plant's four build phases, completed 1917, 1928, 1953 and 1958. After the Christmas Eve 1983 shutdown the switch house was left in place. The station was heritage listed in April 1999.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Reinforced concrete bays line both sides of a long corridor deep inside White Bay Power Station. The vertical ribs repeat in strict formation, each panel identical, receding toward a wash of grey light at the far end. Industrial pendant fittings hang from the low ceiling. The concrete floor is gritty with dust and fine debris. The air feels close, mineral, cold.

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.