STEEPLEJACK FAMILY

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 101, 2 May 1935, Page 4

STEEPLEJACK FAMILY

Cleaning Sydney's Big Ben "Stecplejacking" is a dwindling profession, but Sydney has one family, numbers of which like working at high levels. The head of tho family is 60-ycars-old Charles Meyer, and his four ions are following in Ids footsteps. Mr Meyer and three of the sons are engaged at present in cleaning the four faces of Sydney’s Big Ben"—the famous clock on the tower of the General Post Office -in Martin Place—and :opairing the flagpole. Always leading the way, Mr Moyer climbed the flagoole, 350 feet above Martin 1-lace.^ An enterprising reporter interviewed me of tho sons through an opening in me of tho clock faces while Meyer rvas suspended from a single Tope with i drop of 250 feet beneath him. The reporter was perched on' a steel girder (vitliin the clock face.

"Dad," said Meyer, "received his irsfc training in climbing heights as an A. 8., climbing the mast of a sailing >liip. Ho afterwards -worked on ilie Brooklyn (Now York) Bridge, greasing the wires, and eventually became a steeplejack. The four sons in the family wore taught to climb when they. »vore eleven or twelve. We started, rlimbing ladders, tho height being injreased as our training progressed. It takes about live years’ apprenticeship before you get your full nerve. My sister Ivy went up 250 feet in a bosun’s chair when she was 12, and' liked it. Stecplejacking is really not 1 a dangerous game. Tho main thing is to learn to tie knots. We have a kuoi, which cannot possibly slip."

"It will take a month to .clean the four clock faces," he added, "but I would sooner be up hero than down among the traffic." Ho swung out on his two-inch four strand rope, and resumed his application of kitchen cleaner to the, big hand. .