Big Gas Bottle – Sunshine West

An LPG cylinder is a surprisingly good subject. It has a distinctive profile – the domed top, the collar, the valve guard – that reads clearly at any size, and unlike most industrial products it is an object almost every household has handled. A 45-kilogram bottle is the standard domestic size, and enlarging one produces something instantly familiar and slightly alarming.

The alarming part is doing work. A gas bottle at monumental scale carries an unavoidable suggestion of pressure and volume, which for a company selling industrial gases is arguably the right association: this is a serious product and we handle a great deal of it.

Sunshine West is the sort of place this catalogue keeps finding these objects – a district of warehouses, transport yards and trade suppliers where every building looks the same from the road and an unmistakable shape above the fence line is the cheapest differentiator available.

Melbourne's west is well represented in the enlarged-everyday-object category, alongside the coat hanger at Wacol in Brisbane, the pitchfork at Huntingfield and the gear shift at Hallam.

Because it stands on an operating industrial site, access follows the business.

No one recorded its size and the decade it belongs to.