The gatehouse at Yallourn marks the threshold of an active industrial workplace. For Open House Latrobe, the official mine tour begins at that threshold and continues by minibus, with a member of the rehabilitation team guiding the journey through current operations and the work being planned for the land.

The tour brings the open cut and power station into the same journey. At Yallourn, coal feeds the boilers that produce superheated steam and drive the turbines. From selected viewpoints, visitors can step from the minibus onto gravel and uneven ground and see parts of the mine and power station from inside the industrial boundary. The tour runs for 90 to 120 minutes in groups of 22.

Open House Latrobe campaign banner announcing 9 to 11 October beside an architectural collage.Visit Open House Latrobe
Visit the official program for current dates, bookings and access information.

Every part of that journey follows the requirements of a working mine. The tour requires advance booking, and participation follows the age, clothing, induction, sobriety and mobility conditions in the official listing. Those conditions shape the experience from its first step. They also place the people responsible for the site at the centre of the story.

The mine and power station remain part of Victoria's operating energy system. EnergyAustralia plans to retire Yallourn Power Station in mid-2028. The company is developing detailed closure and rehabilitation plans within Victoria's mine rehabilitation framework, where operators carry responsibility for creating safe, stable and sustainable landforms and government agencies provide for community engagement in the decisions ahead.

Mine staff continue to operate a large industrial system while rehabilitation staff prepare the land, workforce and region for the years that will follow generation. Both responsibilities draw on knowledge held in procedures, machinery, records and the experience of people who understand how the whole place works.

Operations · rehabilitation

Inside the Yallourn energy landscape

The power station, open cut, working machinery and historical record reveal the scale of Yallourn’s energy landscape.

Wide view across farmland and water towards Yallourn Power Station and its cooling towers.
The Yallourn energy landscape, with the power station beyond the lake and surrounding farmland.
Panoramic view of Yallourn Power Station, transmission lines and the open cut.
A panoramic view places Yallourn Power Station beside the open cut and surrounding landscape.
Terraced brown-coal mine with haul roads and conveyor infrastructure.
The open cut’s working benches, roads and conveyor systems.
Historical elevated view of Yallourn Power Station and the open cut.
A historical view of Yallourn Power Station within the open cut.
Historic black-and-white photograph of coal dredges working in a terraced open cut.
Coal dredges working across the terraced open cut.
Large coal-mining dredger crossing the Princes Highway as cars and onlookers wait.
No. 3 coal-mining dredger crossing the Princes Highway on its return to Yallourn open cut.

People in Latrobe have built that knowledge across more than a century. At midday on Sunday 15 June 1924, electricity from the new Yallourn station reached Melbourne through a 177-kilometre high-voltage transmission line. They had mined the coal, built the generating plant and created the system that carried its power across Victoria.

They also built the organisation needed to run it. The Yallourn Production Centre occupies the former administrative centre of the State Electricity Commission's Yallourn undertaking. Its offices gave the planning and coordination of the project a physical home. During Open House Latrobe, the building becomes a place for heritage access, displays and presentations about that history.

Guided tours take visitors through the heritage spaces, while a 30-minute history video runs each hour. Displays across the building and grounds connect the 1924 transmission achievement with engineering, architecture, education, public art and memorial sites across the region. Young visitors can explore the same ideas through hands-on LEGO building activities centred on design, construction and invention. The adjacent Yallourn Botanic Garden extends the visit into the landscape planned around the former town.

The administrative centre also opens a path into the town that grew alongside the industry. The SEC created Yallourn as a planned town influenced by Garden City ideas. Housing, green spaces, sporting facilities, schools, a hospital and a theatre brought work and daily life into one designed setting. Residents formed communities through those places and carried their connections through the wider Valley when mine expansion brought the town's closure and removal by the early 1980s.

Administration · engineering · learning

Yallourn Production Centre

From the former SEC administrative centre, heritage spaces, collections and hands-on learning carry Yallourn’s knowledge forward.

Historical view of the Yallourn administrative building, formal garden and parked cars.
The SEC administrative centre and its formal garden in an earlier era.
Visitor walking towards the front of Yallourn Production Centre beneath transmission lines.
Approaching the Yallourn Production Centre beneath the transmission lines.
Visitor reading in a room furnished with books, armchairs and Bricks and Giggles displays.
A reading space introduces the Bricks and Giggles activities.
Visitor viewing shelves filled with colourful LEGO models and collections.
LEGO collections fill the Production Centre’s activity rooms.
Visitor standing beside the long brick façade of Yallourn Production Centre.
The building’s long classical façade from the entrance forecourt.
Visitor browsing books and historical interpretation panels inside Yallourn Production Centre.
Books and interpretation panels carry regional history through the building.
Visitor assembling a LEGO model at a table in the Production Centre.
Hands-on LEGO activities invite visitors into design and construction.

Volunteers preserve some of Yallourn's energy history in buildings created for other parts of working life. At Yallourn North, the Old Brown Coal Mine Museum occupies the former Yallourn North Camp Recreation Hall. The State Electricity Commission built the weatherboard hall in 1948 for workers during the post-war expansion of the industry. Today, the Yallourn North & District Historical Society uses it to keep photographs, objects and machinery from Brown Coal Mine, Yallourn, Yallourn North and the SEC works available to the community.

The Open House displays bring household life and heavy industry into the same rooms. Photographs and paintings sit among clothing, homewares, tools and medals. The collection also includes the cabin from Yallourn open cut dredger No. 8 and a six-megawatt turbine generator from the former Hazelwood Power Station. An EnergyAustralia information pop-up adds the current work around Yallourn's closure and future site planning to the day.

The museum's name carries its own piece of local history. Brown Coal Mine was the town's earlier name before it became Yallourn North. The collection gives that name a continuing address, held by volunteers who gather, organise and explain the material record of the district.

Inside the former recreation hall, the scale of the energy system can be read through the things people kept. Photographs preserve streets, workplaces and faces. Objects hold the practical decisions of a working day. Machinery gives weight and form to processes that can seem distant when electricity arrives through a switch. Together, the collection and its custodians keep industrial history close to the lives built around it.

Community memory · material history

Brown Coal Mine Museum

Working machinery, civic objects and Yallourn’s community history meet in the museum’s collection.

Brown Coal Mine Museum building and garden with preserved mining machinery.
The Brown Coal Mine Museum and preserved mining machinery in its garden setting.
Preserved Dredger No. 8 driver’s cabin with its identification sign.
The preserved Dredger No. 8 driver’s cabin.
Small timber Yallourn North gaol building displayed at the museum.
The Yallourn North gaol, dating from the 1950s, forms part of the outdoor collection.
Ornamental metal gates bearing the words Yallourn Power Station.
The preserved Yallourn Power Station gates.
Decorative fountain from Yallourn displayed among museum artefacts.
A decorative fountain from Yallourn within the museum collection.
Large industrial megawatt gauge displayed on a brick wall.
A large megawatt gauge carries the scale of electricity generation into the museum.
Museum annexe containing turbine equipment and a large industrial gauge.
The turbine annexe brings generating machinery and instruments together.

PowerWorks volunteers carry the journey into public learning. The centre opened in 1994 and later entered a new period of community stewardship. Volunteers formed PowerWorks Holdings in 2013, and the site passed into community use in 2015. They now operate and maintain the centre, using two levels of interactive and static displays and a theatrette to explain the history of power generation in the Latrobe Valley. Dredger 21 stands nearby as part of the wider industrial landscape.

During Open House Latrobe, visitors can follow the centre at their own pace, use interactive exhibits created for children and watch a short power-industry film in the theatrette. External access at both levels provides another route into the displays. These practical choices make a complex industrial story available across ages and generations.

Here, volunteer work turns technical knowledge into something families, students, former workers and curious visitors can explore. A machine can show how coal moved. A display can connect one task to a generating system. A film can carry people across decades of work and change. The volunteers keep those connections available through their care for the building, its exhibits and the knowledge gathered around them.

Machines · volunteers · public learning

PowerWorks

The visitor centre connects Dredger 21, generating machinery and the industrial collection across the grounds.

PowerWorks Energy Education Centre beneath a blue sky.
The PowerWorks Energy Education Centre.
Dredger 21 and its bucket wheel at PowerWorks.
Dredger 21 presents the scale of open-cut mining machinery.
Memorial to General Sir John Monash beside the PowerWorks building.
The memorial to General Sir John Monash at PowerWorks.
Large turbine rotor displayed outdoors at PowerWorks.
A turbine rotor reveals the weight and precision of electricity generation.
Preserved mining machinery displayed outdoors at PowerWorks.
Preserved mining machinery extends the story into the surrounding grounds.
Dredger bucket with its complete row of teeth mounted on a concrete block at PowerWorks.
A dredger bucket gives visitors a close view of the machinery’s immense scale.

Each of the four Open House sites carries a different part of the same regional capability. Mine and rehabilitation workers hold operational knowledge. The Yallourn Production Centre records the organising work of the SEC undertaking. Historical society volunteers preserve community memory and material evidence. PowerWorks volunteers teach people how to read the machines and systems that shaped the Valley.

Seen together, they make energy a human story of work, responsibility, learning and care. Generations of workers turned brown coal into electricity. Families made lives in towns connected to the industry. Volunteers now give their time to preserve the records, buildings and machines through which that history can be understood. Rehabilitation teams are applying specialist knowledge to the future of the land.

The region's next chapter will draw on all of those forms of knowledge. Mine rehabilitation will continue through planning, regulation, technical work and public engagement. Economic transition will call on the skills of workers, educators, businesses, institutions and communities across Gippsland. The decisions made through that work will shape land, livelihoods and the stories future generations inherit.

During Open House Latrobe, people can enter that larger story through four doors. The official program holds the current dates, bookings and site-specific access information for each experience. One person may begin at the gatehouse and follow the present work of rehabilitation. Another may begin in an administrative room, beside an object preserved by the historical society or in front of a PowerWorks machine. Each doorway adds another part of the region's energy knowledge.

The doors lead into a century of work and towards a future taking shape across the Valley. Workers, rehabilitation staff and volunteers are carrying the region's knowledge forward, one explanation, one preserved object and one well-informed question at a time.

Open House Latrobe social tile inviting people to volunteer from 9 to 11 October.
Volunteer with Open House Latrobe

Continue exploring

Moe Library's curved glass facade and timber-lit interior beside the civic plaza at dusk.Eden of the East

When Latrobe Opens Its Doors

Enter the buildings, systems and community places that shape daily life across Latrobe.Read the Regional Story Children and adults moving through the concrete bowls and street zones of Moe Skatepark.Eden of the East

Moe in Motion

Follow Moe from the railway edge into a story of wheels, music, public service and moved buildings.Read the Regional Story Workers and officials gathered around horse-drawn earthmoving equipment at Yallourn in February 1921.Sir John Monash Museum

When Yallourn Switched On Victoria

The people, machinery and decisions behind Yallourn's first supply of electricity to Melbourne.Read at the Museum Aerial view of Yallourn W under construction with one concrete cooling tower beside the station.Sir John Monash Museum

When the Towers Rose Over Yallourn

Concrete cooling towers joined engineering ambition, generation and Yallourn's changing landscape.Read at the Museum Editorial artwork joining garden-city history with a flourishing garden.Eden of the East

The Question Latrobe Can Answer Together

Power of Colour brings the Garden City question into Latrobe's places, care and future.Read the Regional Story Aerial black-and-white view of Yallourn's central plan, streets, houses and industrial complex.Power of Colour

Yallourn: Power Made Beside a Garden Town

Yallourn joined power generation with a planned town of streets, homes and gardens.Read the Power of Colour story

Explore the program

Open the doors behind the story

The official Open House Latrobe program remains the source for current dates, bookings, access information and program changes.