rope access

This is a face of windows I was cleaning last weekend looking over Sydney Botanical Gardens and down to the Opera House. It is just across the road from the Sydney Art Gallery where I wrote an article a few months ago.

It's just one of the little sydney window cleaning jobs that we look after in Macquarie St. Best to do it on a Saturday when the streets are a bit quieter.

This is a shot looking down Macquarie street towards the Opera House.

Now, as you can see in this shot I am cleaning the windows and I come across one of the hazards that we sometimes hit when we're on the ropes.

I've come across them a few times. They mostly just mind their own business, but if you upset them, they go straight for the throat.

This is a close up of the nest. I recken that there were about 50 or so clustering around the nest doing their work. I got hit by a smaller nest when I was mowing the lawn one day up in Newcastle. I disturbed them when I mowed up under the branch of a jacaranda tree. They just go straight for the throat. I got two hits on the face and one up under my neck. Really accurate and fast. After some ice to the woulds, I fixed them up with a big ball of fire. Revenge.

Have I look at the close up I was taking here with the phone camera.

I found a heep of these is a staggered brick wall at Double Bay a few years back and there was no way that we could work. There would have been about 50 different nests in the wall. I rang the engineer over the job and asked what he thought would be the solution. He laughed and said "Mortein!"

That wasn't far of what we did either.

We got creative and made up some suits and one at a time, hit em with the old Pea Bou. It's pretty wild. They just sort of explode into action and then start dropping dead.

Ok, that's it for now. I will just leave you with this thought. Your working away and suddenly you accidentally hit a big one of these nests. It's a nice summer day and you decided just to wear a tank top to keep cool. Next thing you know you have about 100 of these little antagonistic buggers hitting you from all angles. Do you think that you can get out of there fast enough when you on the ropes?

Not much else you can do.

Cheers, Mike King.