Switch House Store Room

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/9.0 · 1/20 · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Storage racks line the walls of the Switch House storeroom, most of the shelves now cleared. What is left sits on the brick floor: measurement instruments with their dials and switches frozen, enclosures knocked over and open to the dust. Light comes through a grid of small panes, much of the glass broken. The racks once held electrical components and instrumentation for the station.

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

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

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

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

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Switch House Store Room
Series: White Bay Power Station
Catalogue: WBP-111
Process: Giclée
Captured: 27 May 2016
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter: 1/20 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 store room in the switch house at White Bay Power Station is a concrete-floored space off the main switch house corridor, the shelves carrying residual electrical spares and fittings left in place after the station closed. On the shelves sit replacement fuses in their original cardboard boxes, relay test leads in cloth-covered cables, instrument transformers in bubble-wrap packaging, and stacks of circuit breaker maintenance schedules in manila envelopes. Labels on the shelves in painted-on enamel letter the contents by switchgear bay reference number. A tool rack is fixed to the far wall, the hooks still carrying insulated screwdrivers and wire strippers. The door has a steel frame with a combination padlock hasp.

Switch house store rooms at White Bay Power Station held the spares and tooling for the site's high-voltage switchgear. The switch house contained the protection relays, bus section switches, and feeder switchgear that controlled the distribution of White Bay's output to the tram and rail substations across Sydney. Reliable protection system operation required a ready supply of spare fuses, relay components, and test equipment. White Bay ran from 1917 to Christmas Eve 1983 under the NSW Government Railways and, from January 1953, under the Electricity Commission of NSW. After the shutdown and formal decommissioning in 1984, the switch house store room was left intact. The heritage listing in April 1999 covered the switch house buildings.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Steel storage racks run the length of the left wall, most shelves cleared out. A few instruments and metal housings remain. On the brick floor, a heavy cast fitting sits disconnected, coated in grit. Electrical cabinets stand against the far wall beneath a six-pane window. Light falls across the brickwork in a wide band, picking up the dust and debris scattered over every surface. Looped cabling hangs from the right wall. The air looks thick and still.

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.