After eight months' work and a cost of more than $100,000, the parishioners of City Uniting Church can enjoy the sounds of their 85-year-old organ for at least the next 70 years.
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According to the organ builder responsible for its restoration, Robert Heatley, that's more than can be said for the organ's electronic equivalents, or as he dismissively calls them, ''converted toasters''.
Work on the Uniting Church's organ has been completed after specialist restoration was undertaken by Australian Pipe Organs, one of only about eight organ builders and restorers in Australia.
The company's principal, Mr Heatley, said that if well maintained, the organ's action should not need attention for another 70 years.
The organ was built in 1925 and was in Goulburn's former St Andrew's Presbyterian Church. After the establishment of the Uniting Church, the organ was no longer required and was moved to the then new City Uniting Church in 1988.
Mr Heatley said the moderate-sized organ, with its 1018 pipes, was exactly right for the building. He said some alterations, fashionable at the time, had been made when the organ was moved, but in retrospect were not terribly satisfactory. Its tubular pneumatic action was in a virtual state of collapse. Lead tubing had been replaced with electrical cable which meant transmission between the keys and the pipes was now by electricity instead of air.
For its restoration, the organ was dismantled and taken to Melbourne. Mr Heatley and assistant Daniel Bittner worked for several weeks in Canberra reassembling it in the Northbourne Avenue church.
Mr Heatley began working on organs almost by chance. His school music teacher invited him to join him in an inspection of a new organ being built for the adjacent church.
''While I was down there, the fellow who became my boss offered me an apprenticeship.'' He left school in 1964 and, having had no other plans had decided, ''I'll give this a go''. He has been giving it a go since.
Asked what he thought of electronic organs, Mr Heatley said, ''Are they organs or are they converted toasters.'' He said putting an electronic organ into a church was like putting up vases of plastic flowers. ''It is not the real thing.''
Reflecting a decline in church life and a love of pipe organs, Australia's pipe organ industry is not as large as in the 1960s. Despite this, Mr Heatley said, ''We are absolutely flat out.''
About 12 years ago his company built a new organ for Canberra's Marist College. There are only about eight businesses in Australia which undertake organ building and restoration. When building a new organ, his company creates almost everything except keyboards, which are imported from England, and some electrical components, made in England or the US. Blowers, quiet enough for organs, come from Germany.
Mr Bittner began his apprenticeship about eight years ago having seen the position advertised on the internet. Though he completed his apprenticeship about four years ago, he said, ''It is a trade where you are always learning. It never stops, no matter how old you are.''
