AFFABLE Moe chimney sweep Paul Robinson knows what it's like to stare into the eyes of a startled duck.
A sooty, muscovy, startled duck.
Called to a house, he was tasked with the rescue of a duck, stuck Santa-like in a chimney, after it had ``flapped'' its way down.
It was perched on the smoke shield, used to draw the smoke up by creating a pocket of low pressure.
``It was sooty,'' Mr Robinson said.
Quite clean himself while demonstrating his black trade, he explained it was his first job of the day.
``You should have seen me yesterday,'' he said.
Having already plied another of the oldest professions, running a home brew concentrate cannery and very briefly as brewer, he bought Baw Baw Chimney Sweeping in 2000; a sweep virgin.
But, it was with a mind to family history, especially to his Glaswegian grandfather Ike Robinson, that swept him away.
``Well, I've always been interested in it, which seems like a really strange thing,'' he said.
``My grandfather was a chimney builder, he built a lot of chimneys up on the Monaro, up in the Snowy Mountains.
``I was always sort of awe inspired when you'd go up there and there was nothing standing there apart from the chimney that my grandfather built.
``My dad would say, `See that one over there? Your grandfather built that'.
``And as I got older I started to think, `That's real good, there's part of your heritage'.
``But then you think, `Why has the house gone, I hope it didn't burn down'.''
Which is what the work of the sweep is intended to prevent.
Mr Robinson also has a mind for other historical matters of the sweep, talking of `Oliver Twist' in the Charles Dickins novel when a brutal chimney sweep called Gamfield wants to take Oliver as an apprentice, but is refused by a magistrate.
And the 1845 fairy tale, `The Shepherdess and the Sweep', by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen where a porcelain chimney sweep sits upon a table top near his love, who he rescues by taking her to safety through the stove pipe.
More recently, Mary Poppins and the whole `Chim chiminey, Chim chiminey' thing.
``There is a lot of geometry, it sort of depends on a lot of things, a basic grounding in mathematics, science as well,'' Mr Robinson said.
``And you find some bizarre stuff.''
Which leads back to the startled duck.
``You could hear it as soon as you walked in the house, just flapping in there,'' he said.
``It was a case of getting in there, grabbing its legs and pulling it through.
``I don't think it repeated the trick because I never heard back from the people.''
About 25 per cent of his work is cleaning chimneys now, with the trade ``evolving'' to dealing with wood heaters and the flumes.
But there are some throwbacks to the old days, with more mythology.
``Ex-patriot Scottish folks, their New Year's Eve celebrations are called Hogmanay and it is incredibly good luck to get the chimney swept just before,'' Mr Robinson said.
``In the middle of summer when it is 38 degrees I'll be outside sweeping chimneys for Scottish people.
``Also it's very lucky for a bride to kiss a chimney sweep on her wedding day.
``I guess the reason they are seen as lucky is because if you saw one who was still alive, he was obviously lucky.''
Mr Robinson is the only sweep in the Valley, and his tools include a rod brush made from Ranogoon cane with brass fittings that fit together to give length, made in the early 1900s.
It is topped with a stainless steel circular ``wheel'' brush that looks like a centipede and a spider hybrid and comes from a street sweeper.
There is also a pull-through brush, which has a caste iron ball on a chain with a brush above tied to a rope that is lowered down.
However, he said he used Google Maps ``heaps''.
``At the end of every day I'll look up Google Maps and check out street view, to check out what the flues are like,'' he said.
Cleaning can take between half an hour and two hours, and a sweep can dread chimney's like the church building housing La Porcetta in Traralgon, imposing from three stories with a peaked roof and bended flue.
Email a friend
Favourites
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Digg
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Reddit
Newsvine
LinkedIn
Kwoff
Twitter