Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station, reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained.
Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station, reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained.

Turbine Hall

Provenance

Camera
NIKON D7000
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings
21mm · f/8.0 · 1/20 · ISO 100
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The colossal Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station reveals its decaying grandeur. Concrete pillars rise, framing an empty floor where colossal turbines once generated power for Sydney. The station closed in 1983.

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.
See certificate sample →

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In situ

Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station, reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained.Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station, reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained.Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station, reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained.Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station, reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained.Turbine Hall at White Bay Power Station, reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained.
01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title
Turbine Hall
Series
White Bay Power Station
Catalogue
WBP-074
Process
Giclée
Captured
13 November 2015
Camera
NIKON D7000
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture
f/8.0
Shutter
1/20 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 turbine hall at White Bay Power Station is a long, high-roofed space with overhead crane rails running its length, the floor patterned with the bolt-down marks of turbines that have since been removed. The walls are exposed brick on the lower courses, painted institutional cream above. Tall windows along both side walls admit even daylight. A single overhead crane is parked at one end of the hall. The roof is steel truss, with skylights set between the trusses. The acoustics in the empty hall are unusually long; sound carries the full length of the building.

White Bay Power Station was built from 1917 onwards to supply electricity to Sydney's expanding tram and rail network and to the surrounding industrial and residential districts. The turbine hall housed the steam turbines that turned the generators, fed by steam from the boiler house next door. Coal arrived by ship at the wharf below the plant, was conveyed up to the bunkers, and burned in the boilers to raise steam. White Bay ran continuously for sixty-six years before being decommissioned in 1983. The hall in this photograph has been empty for over four decades. It is heritage-listed and the subject of ongoing redevelopment proposals.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

The turbine hall at White Bay Power Station stretches deep into grey light. Reinforced concrete walls rise three storeys on each side, their surfaces stained and peeling. A steel truss roof spans the full width overhead. Red-painted safety railings border open generator bays where machinery has been pulled out, leaving dark rectangular voids in the floor. Small windows punctuate the upper walls. Dust and grit cover every horizontal surface.

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
06 REVIEWS · 3 FROM CUSTOMERS

What collectors say

  1. Elizabeth C.

    7 September 2022

    Amazing work!

    Oh my goodness it was so hard to choose which picture to go for. All the works are so great! We chose an A3 print from the White Bay Power Station - it came the next day packaged beautifully. If you like industrial / architectural photography this is definitely the website for you.

  2. Sarah J.

    6 September 2022

    White Bay Photograph

    Love your work Brett, very happy with my photograph of a site in Sydney I've always wanted to explore. Ordering and delivery was super easy and quick, the hardest part was choosing which beautiful piece to put on my wall.

  3. Positronic S.

    31 August 2022

    Trophies

    I own Positronic Solar. We are in the business of shutting down coal fired power stations. These are gifts to the boys for a year where we installed 3MW of solar and generated 50GWh of clean energy. Boys haven't seen them yet but every rep coming in bearing goodies in the past week is blown away by the quality of the photography and production
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
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
Boiler House Basement To Ceiling at White Bay Power Station, steel framework climbs from the basement floor.
Boiler House Basement To Ceiling $100.00
08 BY POST · NO SPAM

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