Substation underneather the The Advertiser building in Adelaide.

Randy Larcombe’s photographs reveal a humming hidden world – a shadowy subterranean network obscured by footpaths and buildings that is the city of Adelaide’s beating heart.   

Hindley Street substation. A wooden Desk and beige phone, feature of most of the substations. There are 618 sites in the CBD and North Adelaide where substations are inside other buildings.

33kV/415V transformer and low voltage cables, at The Advertiser substation. Electrical substations are responsible for routing all of the electricity that powers our cities.

“I liked the idea of a secret world that we walked past every day, so I felt compelled to record it,” says Randy, who photographed the substations. “Also many of the older ones will be replaced, and one day they won’t be around at all – so there’s a sense of recording history as well.”

Fisher Place substation, Adelaide, South Australia. Little has altered the appearance of the transformers, switchboards and break-down boxes in many of these substations since they were first installed half a century or more ago.

“I was amazed that once you walked through that door it was like entering another time, not just another place,” says Randy. “There are old bakelite light switches covered with cobwebs on textured brick walls.”

East Tce substation. Many of the doors and access points to these stations are hiding in plain sight.

A manhole gives access to the street, where people walk above these snaking wires underneath the footpath. “You can see here how the cables disappear into the wall on their journey to their destination,” Randy says.

Woolworths substation, just off North Tce, Adelaide. Underground units such as these – with 33,000 volts of live electricity coursing through them – are out of the way for safety reasons

Photographing the quirky charm of these substations has become a pet project for Australian Gegoraphic photographer Randy Larcombe.          

Adelaide has hundreds of substations such as the Woolworths one. Each of the names is stencilled onto chairs “placed almost randomly in the spaces, as if someone had just had their lunch, got up and left,” says photographer Randy.

Bob Burt checks equipment at the Ruthven Mansions (known as Porters Lane) substation. “You walk through this narrow laneway and in a wall there is a door,” says Randy. “Inside the substation are old, incandescent light globes with old-fashioned lampshades. You climb 4m down a ladder and there’s the sub-station and all the gear – installed about 1930 and still working.”

There is something eerily beautiful about the stations. When you’ve worked down in these stations for 40 years, though, you see things differently, says operations supervisor Jeff Crockford.

Many of the doors and access points to these stations are hiding in plain sight. “It’s like stepping into a scene from the movie Blade Runner. It’s the contrast between the two worlds only separated by a door that fascinates me,” says photographer Randy.           

Dotted throughout North Adelaide and the CBD – and every other large city in Australia – are substations, whose units feed our ever-increasing demands for power.

Protection Panel, Synagogue Substation, Adelaide, South Australia.