Going, going, gone..... the Yallourn Briquette Factory chimney.
The 100 metre high chimney of the Yallourn Briquette Factory "lived" for three hours longer than planned. The chimney, once Australia's tallest, was felled at 1:56pm on Saturday, 21 June, 1975.
The event had been set for 11am but preparations took a lot longer than expected. It was the last stage in the demolition of the 51-year old briquette factory which closed in 1971 after producing more than 20 million tonnes of briquettes. Whelan the Wrecker Demolitions, who carried out the work, believed that the chimney was the largest ever bought down in Australia. Built of reinforced concrete with brick lining, the chimney had an inside diameter of about 4 metres and weighed 2360 tonnes. The concrete was 500mm thick at the base and 115mm at the top.
To fell the chimney, about 100 holes were drilled into the base, filled with explosives and detonated over a period of 15 seconds. The chimney's last moments were watched by a large crowd who travelled to Yallourn specially to see the famous chimney come down. It was also seen by thousands of Victorian television viewers and it received wide press coverage.