One day in 1981 I volunteered to install two security cameras below the space frame above the top floor of the Wentworth hotel.
It was the hotel on the top 15 floors of the 50 floor 35 Collins Place tower. The hotel is now named Sofitel Melbourne on Collins.
I was working for Australian Video Engineering as an electronic technician at the time and nobody else in our team wanted to do that task.
I didn’t have a safety harness though I did have a rope tied firmly to the spaceframe. I felt very uncomfortable lying on the catwalk leaning over the edge while screwing the camera bracket into the attaching point on the spaceframe.
Looking down at the floor of the atrium 15 floors below It took me a while to locate the mounting hole. I was scared of dropping the bracket on somebody. I felt very relieved when its thread firmly engaged. Then I held on to the spanner very carefully as I tightened it in place.
Even though I had somebody firmly holding my feet, I felt as though I was going to plunge to my death. I was determined to complete that job anyway. I still had to mount the cameras on their brackets, and that was an even greater stretch.
Going back up with the cameras and looking at the 15 floor drop, I knew that I might die. I also knew that the cameras had to be fitted and nobody else wanted to do it.
I wondered what is really important to me. Some people. Some things. The things really aren’t very important.
Then I considered the fact that I might survive so, with some difficulty I installed both cameras. Fitting the connectors and plugging them in the cameras was also a challenge and it was not until I went down to the security room and saw both camera images on the television monitors that I felt relaxed.
The other team members very gratefully thanked me for installing those cameras and I felt extremely satisfied at have done such a challenging job.