Although young in pipe organ terms, the Letourneau instrument at St Matthew's Church, Albury, still shows signs of its quarter of a century history.
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"Imagine not vacuuming or dusting a house for 25 years, there'd be a slight build-up of dust and dirt," organ builder Rodney Ford said with a smile.
Mr Ford and colleague Jordan Gutteridge, of Peter Jewkes Pty Ltd, are into the second week of cleaning the organ's interior, a task they describe as not difficult, but time consuming.
"In all there's about 1200 pipes in the organ," Mr Ford said.
"The really big fellows are about 16 feet long and they go from that right down to the size of a pencil."
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"We have to be quite careful with the pipes, it's very easy to bump them, they're quite sensitive to anything like that," the organ builder said.
"We like to work fairly quickly; once we clean a section we put the pipes straight back into the organ, because that's the best place for them, that's where they're happiest and safest.
"Some of the really big guys inside we can't actually get out ... so we just leave them in place and we clean around them."
The cleaning and subsequent tuning will be finished in time for the St Matthew's anniversary celebrations in September, 25 years since reopening after the destructive 1991 fire.
"It's sort of like the phoenix rising from the ashes," Mr Ford said.
"A lot of good has come from a very difficult period in the church's history and they have a wonderful, wonderful instrument.
"It will continue to inspire players in the future as well.
"So long as they look after it and maintain it, it will certainly outsee all of us."
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