This is the second part of a consecutive trilogy about raspberries. To protect the Sydney Harbour Bridge’s steel from corrosion, and to keep the bridge looking nice, regular repainting is essential. Each coat of paint on the 485,000 square metres of steelwork – the area of 60 football fields – requires 30,000 litres. When I was a nipper, my Dad told me they painted the bridge non-stop. In other words, by the time they’d finished, they had to start again. Dads aren’t always right, but in this case mine was. The bridge’s continuous painting began when the bridge was constructed in the late 1920s. The relevance to raspberries? When I pick raspberries, I always walk around our patch anti-clockwise (why not clockwise, I have no idea). And I could swear that by the time I finish my circuit, there are ripe berries at the beginning that weren’t ripe when I started. Funny, that. Anyway the bridge’s continuous painting programme ended in 1997. In 2003, the next complete repainting commenced, following concern that the weight of its many layers of paint might affect the bridge’s structure. As the previous paint was lead-based, precautions were devised to prevent falling paint contaminating the harbour. This requires that each section being painted is sealed off, and the old paint blasted off and vacuum extracted. Picking raspberries is a much simpler process.
No comments:
Post a Comment