The Sydney Morning Herald
· collected 2026-09-18 · by Nick O'Malley, Janie Barrett
It is just after midnight on a winter morning when we gather at the Port of Newcastle.
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we → gather → Newcastle
In the background coal ships slink by, in the foreground an almost inconceivably vast wind turbine blade lies along the spine of a truck bed like some sort of alien life form strapped to a gurney in a sci-fi film.
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blade → slink → film
It’s so big that it’s hard to fit it all into the frame of your eye from any reasonable perspective.
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it → ’ → perspective
At its tip it tapers to the length of schoolkid’s ruler.
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it → taper → ruler
Towards that tapered end it has a jagged edge like a cartoon dragon’s teeth, a shape designed to reduce noise as it slices through the air.
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it → have → air
Peering up at its midsection, you could be looking at a warship’s prow from the ocean’s surface.
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you → peer → surface
A team of transport specialists are making last-minute preparations to move this beast through the sleeping streets of suburban Newcastle and the coal villages of the Hunter Valley, along the Golden Highway to a hillside outside Wellington on the NSW Central Slopes, where it is to be raised upon a tower as part of a Squadron Energy wind farm that will soon be generating enough electricity for about 220,000 homes.
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that → make → homes
It seems absurd that this thing can be moved at all, let alone along busy roads, but the man in charge of this circus, Steve Spiller, seems impossibly calm.
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man → seem → circus
Form and function
Wind turbine blades, explains engineer Dr Rosemary Barnes, are the largest single-component objects that humans regularly either build or seek to move.
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humans → explain → that
Artefacts of the modern world tend to shrink as technology advances, but wind turbines, shaped by both economic and physical forces, keep growing.
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turbines → tend → forces
Longer turbine blades scoop up more wind and generate more electricity with each rotation, says Barnes, who has spent a career designing, building and repairing turbines and blades around the world and now runs a renewable energy consultancy.
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who → scoop → consultancy
A dozen huge turbines need fewer gearboxes, less cable and wiring, less maintenance, less concrete and steel to generate as much electricity as dozens of small ones.
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turbines → need → ones
As the turbines grow in length, so do the forces exerted upon them.
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forces → grow → them
In extreme conditions, a large blade might bend 10 to 15 metres from a straight line.
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blade → bend → line
Imagine, says Barnes, a diving board wilting under the weight of a herd of elephants.
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Barnes → imagine → elephants
“They have to survive that transfer of force hundreds of millions of times over a life of about 30 years.
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They → have → years
Every time the blade is in the three o’clock position, gravity is bending it one way, and then when it goes into the nine o’clock position, it’s bending the exact opposite way, and it keeps repeating like that as it spins.
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it → bend → that
It’s just like if you bend a paperclip back and forth repeatedly, you know that small load is not going to break it, but you do it enough times, and you get fatigue loading, it is going to break.
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it → ’ → loading
”
All this means that not only must a blade be handmade from tough, light composite materials, they are stronger when they are crafted in a single piece, rather than disassembled for transport, which brings us back to Spiller and his crew in Newcastle.
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which → mean → Newcastle
The monster they are about to move is 82 metres long and weighs just over 20 tonnes.
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they → move → tonnes
The port
The crew is doing last-minute checks on vehicles and equipment.
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crew → do → vehicles
Craig Carpenter is inspecting the Kenworth truck and the purpose-built trailer he is about to drive.
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he → inspect → truck
The trailer has a long spine that can be extended to suit its load, and six sets of axles at the rear.
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that → have → rear
Carpenter picked up the nickname Blade Runner One for his smooth driving while moving blades in Western Australia last year, but just as crucial is Freddie Scheepers, who is “steerer” and will pursue Carpenter in a van close behind the truck.
Scheepers must not only keep his own vehicle on the road, but when necessary will use a remote control to steer the rear axles of the trailer.
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Scheepers → pick → trailer
He keeps in constant contact with Carpenter so at any given moment the two know exactly where the blade tip is in relation to the road and the rest of the rig.
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tip → keep → rig
“Those two are very, very close, and they’ve got a really good bond.
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they → get → bond
They know what the other bloke is going to do before he does it.”Steve
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he → know → it
When the front of the rig moves upwards and is forcing the tip towards the ground, Scheepers will also be able to raise and lower the blade itself, the last metres of which rest in a hydraulic jack that sits over the axle sets.
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that → move → sets
“Those two are very, very close, and they’ve got a really good bond,” says Spiller, watching Carpenter and Scheepers make final preparations.
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Carpenter → get → preparations
“They know what the other bloke is going to do before he does it.”
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he → know → it
Mayfield Macca’s
The convoy pulls out at about 1am.
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convoy → pull → am
There are four pilot vehicles which help manage traffic around the truck and trailer.
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which → be → truck
Scheepers’ steering van hunts along behind the blade like a sheepdog, and we follow in a four-wheel drive with Spiller, the project manager.
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we → hunt → Spiller
Also in tow is a Transport NSW vehicle with a couple of observers, there to see if anything can be learnt or improved for future runs.
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anything → see → runs
“When you pull back the curtain, this is what building a wind farm looks like – thousands of individual movements, decisions and people are needed to get every component to site,” Squadron Energy’s chief executive Rob Wheals later observes.
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executive → pull → site
“At 80 metres long and shaped like a banana, each blade is one of the most challenging pieces of infrastructure to ever move.”
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blade → shape → infrastructure
From Spiller’s radio we can hear occasional chatter from the pilot vehicles, but he leaves the “Bladerunners” to their own quiet comms channel so they can concentrate.
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they → hear → channel
Before we’ve even left the Port precinct the blade tip sweeps out over a cyclone fence, clearing it by what seems like centimetres.
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what → leave → centimetres
Spiller doesn’t flinch.
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Spiller → flinch → ?
Every move is rehearsed, every distance measured.
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distance → rehearse → ?
…and 55 more, not listed.
The Aporia
