Morwell - No. 21 Bucket Dredger
Originally built for the Morwell open cut in the 1950s, the dredger was the first bucket-wheel excavator used on site to remove the overburden waste and it serviced the mine for almost 40 years.
No 21 Dredger is historically significant as it was the first bucket wheel excavator to be used at the Morwell open cut. The Morwell open cut was a new major open cut project developed by the SECV with work starting on site in 1949. No 21 Dredger had a long period of service in the mine and worked between October 1955 and August 1992. It was used to excavate overburden and to supply brown coal to the Yallourn power station, and later to the Morwell power station and briquette factory, and Hazelwood Power Station.
The design originated in German brown coal mines in the mid-1930s. No 21 Dredger was one of the earliest uses of German continuous mining techniques and technology to be applied outside of Germany.
Ordered in 1950, this machine is largely based on pre-war excavator technology. It provides a direct comparison with later post-war bucket wheel excavator designs. This machine is fitted with a bucket wheel boom which features a crowding or thrusting movement where the bucket wheel can be moved relative to the slewing axis. This feature is largely associated with the pre-war or first stage of bucket wheel excavator development, and was no longer applied to new machines by the mid-1950s. By this time, post-war excavators had greatly increased in size, and were not fitted with the crowd feature, instead the bucket wheel to slewing axis length was fixed. This greatly simplified the design of the conveyors, transfer points, and deleted the requirements for an additional conveyor, moving counterweights and a thrust drive.
Location
Cnr Ridge Road and Commercial Road, Morwell 3840 Map
