Cathedral restoration is one in a million
THE Right Reverend John Parkes, Anglican bishop and Dean of Brisbane, got a surprise when he opened his mail recently.
Out fell a cheque for $1 million.
The timing of the donation was what surprised the bishop most, for just three weeks earlier another $1 million cheque had arrived in the morning post.
He said although the cheques were "just bits of paper" they represented the staggering generosity from the community eager to see Brisbane's great St John's Cathedral completed - more than 100 years after the first stone was laid.
Bishop Parkes said there were two other leviathan acts of generosity this year.
A benefactor who asked for anonymity donated $5 million. Another wealthy family tossed $2 million into the pot.
Generous souls have pumped $39.5 million into the cathedral building fund since 1989 when Anglicans got serious about completing St John's.
Not all of the money came from Anglicans.
"We have 400 stones to lay on the central tower, which is about six weeks' work," Bishop Parkes said.
"We are putting the copper cladding on the spire and that will be in place by December 1.
"After that, it's just a matter of cleaning down."
The cathedral is, by the way, looking for someone with another lazy million.
"We need $1 million more to make sure the cathedral is dedicated debt-free," he said.
When completed, St John's will be not only a towering edifice to Christianity but also a grand work of art and architecture in the Gothic revival style.
This week I climbed to the very top of the cathedral with the bishop and his communications director Darrin Davies to where stone masons are completing a most historic jigsaw. Incredibly, the masons are working to the original 1889 designs of master Victorian cathedral designer John Loughborough Pearson.
Draftsmen interpret these original drawings on the CAD (Computer Assisted Drawing) system to guide the diamond-tipped saw in cutting sandstone blocks to size at the church's own quarry at Helidon, just below the Toowoomba Range.
"The drawings are precise and elegantly done," the bishop said.
"Pearson had enormous vision. He not only got the big picture right but he knew exactly what he wanted in the fine detail.
"So the masons are building it in accordance with the plans of a man who has been dead for more than 100 years using methods that have been around for 500 years or more.
"Pearson said he designed this building to drive men to their knees. He succeeded. There is something bigger than us here - a sense of peace and grandeur, what the Celts call a thin place where the boundary between heaven and earth is so porous you could almost touch beyond."
Pearson died in 1897 leaving his son Frank to complete the commission.
(
visit link)