Comments on: Amazing video of the demolition of Newcastle’s BHP Steelworks

By: Roland 27704

Roland 27704 — Mon, 02 May 2011 11:56:52 +0000

I did a tour of the works in June ’99 and used four rolls of slide film without an eyebrow raised. Driving past the site, especially at night when they were flaring off coke ovens or blast furnace gas was impressive even for one with a great contempt of “The Company”. It was a place that generated great emotions, as you were inside a great machine with massive forces, the main motor at #2 Bloom Mill was 250,000 hp, flicking twin 1 metre plus diameter shafts around back and fourth as if they were match sticks.

By: Renew Newcastle’s coming to America tour | marcus westbury

Renew Newcastle’s coming to America tour | marcus westbury — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 03:34:09 +0000

[...] have set the city backwards. Newcastle was once home to Australia’s largest steelworks (see here for a awesome but sad video of it being blown up) and industries like shipbuilding that there isn’t a lot of left in Australia anymore. Its [...]

By: Dave Sag

Dave Sag — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:21:44 +0000

That was beautiful. When solar power is just that little bit cheaper we can look forward to seeing similar video of some old coal-fired power stations crashing down too. Now that would be a wonderful sight.

By: Stilgherrian

Stilgherrian — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:29:14 +0000

Thanks for the linkage, Marcus.

As it happens, I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea of a TV/video program somehow conveying the awe and scale of the modern information age — not about the technology per se but how it’s connecting humans — using various visualisations to help people get their heads around it. Now those thoughts are back in my head. Hmmm…

By: marcus

marcus — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:05:11 +0000

No, probably not.

Actually my friend Dan Hill of City of Sound http://www.cityofsound.com is a guy you should chat with about some of this stuff. His interest cross eclecticly between architecture, IT, urban planning etc and one his recurring themes is that you can’t actually see what cities do anymore. An office buildings is an office building is an office building so much ot the distinctiveness of places and the connections between what they make and how they feel are broken.

He is very into mixing architecture and data visualisation as a means to deal with this — i’m not 100% sure that always works but it’s a good start — but it’s a really interesting question.

As for the scale of the old BHP site — it was enormous. I still find it’s absence a strange hole in the skyline of Newcastle. I still find myself sitting by the harbour and pining for the huge plumes of fire that used to shoot into the night. I mean, it was probably killing us but man it looked good.

By: Stilgherrian

Stilgherrian — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:43:11 +0000

One thing which always strikes me about stories and images of industrial decline is the sheer physical scale of everything. That must surely contribute to the powerful emotions people feel when it all comes to an end.

Steelmaking in particular is about carving rock out of the very Earth itself, melting it in primal fire and forging it into new things — and in the great age of steam they were things like steam locomotives, again filled with primal fire and hissing and breathing like a dragon.

Now the grand creations of our world are things like the massive infrastructure of Google data centres and optical fibre cables — but they’re almost invisible. Will we feel the same primal emotions when a data centre is turned off?