The Kandos Museum helped moved an 11 metre long, three metre high ball mill from the Kandos Cement Works to the Kandos Museum on Tuesday with the aim of making the mill the centrepiece of the museum’s external collection. 

“We were very lucky to be offered the ball mill by Cement Australia,” Dr Buzz Sanderson, President of the Kandos Museum, said.

“When Cement Australia decided to demolish the Kandos Cement Works, they asked us which parts we wanted to exhibit at the museum and the ball mill was one of them. There was a plan at one stage to place the ball mill down near the railway station at the entrance to town but there were just too many safety concerns.”

Crane crews were at work on Tuesday trying to get the machinery moved from the Kandos Cement Works to the middle of town without any problems. 

“The crane guys will definitely have some fun getting it from A to B. The ball mill is in a position that’s not all that accessible and it’s going to a place that’s only slightly more accessible,” Dr Sanderson said. 

All up, the operation was expected to take at least seven hours. 

The ball mill will be placed beside the Kandos Museum in Buchanan Street to give visitors to the museum a sense of how the machinery worked when it was in operation. 

In order to do this, the Kandos Museum have had three sections cut away from the machine that will allow guests to pop their head inside and see the inner workings of the machine. 

“The ball mill is big enough to speak of the scale of the operation,” Dr Sanderson said.  

“We hope to make it the centrepiece of our external collection and develop the block where it will be placed into an area with a significant number of machine parts,” 

The Kandos Museum said once the ball mill exhibit was in place, visitors would be able to examine the piece as it was when the cement works was open – cement dust and all.