Last Day in the Dynamite Factory Read Online Free Page A

The high-set Federation style ‘Queenslander’ houses were back in vogue and over the next ten years Chris built a name for himself in restoration work. His biggest coup was winning the contract to restore the 100-year-old Church of St Barnabas, a pitted, peeling, shellac-encrusted timber edifice in the heart of Brisbane. Ad hoc alterations compounded the depressing effect: imitation hardwood linings, cheap door furniture and plastic light fittings.
    Over two years, Chris restumped, cross-braced and replaced rotted boards. Five layers of paint were removed from the main building and bell tower, and cracked linoleum was lifted to reveal five-inch floorboards. All the boards, pews, lecterns and intricate fretwork of choir stalls were stripped, sanded and waxed. Stained-glass windows replaced cracked glass and Chris sourced old light fittings and door and window hardware from demolition sites all over Australia. A specialist was brought in to repair and revoice the organ.
    At times, Chris wondered about the wisdom of removing everything added since the church was built. There was not much intrinsic value in any individual item but as each represented a facet of parish life over a hundred years, removing them effectively erased the church’s history.
    The Board of Trustees had no such reservations, however, and at the Service of Reconsecration the pews filled with people, bells pealed loud and clear from the bell tower, voices rolled in the rafters and the organ thundered jubilantly from the loft. Sunlight shafted through gleaming windows and settled on the nourished curves of rosewood and cedar, as it had a century before.
    A triumph. God smiled.
    Compliments poured in.
    A year or so later Chris returned to admire his accomplishment. A dozen or so parishioners were huddled on white plastic chairs in a space created by pushing back pews. A boom box pumped out canned hymn music. The vicar stood not in the pulpit but among his small flock.
    Chris was dumbfounded.
    â€˜We don’t have the numbers,’ the vicar explained. ‘The organist left and nobody else can play. If I stand in the pulpit, people can’t hear me.’
    â€˜Convert one of the recesses,’ Chris urged. ‘Put in some carpet, a few comfortable chairs and a small organ. Easy.’ He took his proposal to the trustees, assuring them every change would be simple, identifiable and removable. He would work pro bono. The trustees declined. Why spend all that money on restorations if you were going to put back what you’d taken out?
    Chris had never returned to the Church of St Barnabas and, as far as he knows, nothing has changed since.
    But he had. He’d drawn a line between restoration and thoughtful renovation. ‘Old’ and ‘precious’ ceased to be synonymous, as did ‘new’ and ‘worthless’. ‘Historic’ no longer meant frozen in time. There’d be no more wholesale ripping out of changes made over a building’s lifetime.
    His change of style required people to switch from a dewy-eyed view of the past to valuing a structure in which its whole life is reflected. He now regards a building as having more value when it represents not just a construction date but all the eras and people who have lived through it. A community’s life can be traced through its buildings’ uses, their triumphs and failures. If their knees are patched and their teeth have fallen out, let it show. If an 1888 courthouse, for example, became a soup kitchen during the First World War, let it be seen. Not everyone shared Chris’s view, but enough did for him to acquire a faithful new following.
    He flips through Judge’s notes from his meeting with Harold Porter. Nothing too outlandish – probably because all the remaining walls are load-bearing.
    His musings are interrupted by the phone.
    It’s Ben. He’s just collected Jo’s ashes from the crematorium. What should he do with