GUIDO GOUVERNEUR Blacksmith
Guido Gouverneur’s work appears all over Sydney:
the weathervane on top of the University
of Sydney’s Anderson
Stuart building, commissioned by the doyen of heritage architects, Clive
Lucas; the Queen Elizabeth
II Gates between the Botanic Gardens and the Sydney Opera House, and those on
the Centennial Park reservoir, which won a National Trust Heritage Award. There
are also old lanterns in The Rocks, some special shipwright’s tools made for
the National Maritime
Museum, rivets on the historic
locomotive 3830 and iron palings for Centennial
Park’s palisade fence.
The New Zealand-born master blacksmith’s most recent
big-scale commission, which occupied him from April to December last year, was
the restoration of the balustrade at Dawes Point, running from Horseferry Steps
to Pier 1. “It was a huge undertaking for us, restoring it properly and
getting the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority to recognise that it should be
done properly,” says Gouverneur. The balustrade had been spot-repaired
over years but this was a much larger project: the posts were lifted from their
sandstone base and corroded elements were replaced – in some sections, old bars
from Parramatta Jail replaced damaged posts.
Gouverneur’s pride in his workmanship is palpable, although
it’s never going to make him rich.
“I still don’t own my own house but things are
improving,” the 49-year-old says. “1 just want to do the best job you
could possibly do and to be able to keep on doing it.”
Gouverneur became entranced by what he calls “the whole
drama of fire” as a boy in Dunedin in New Zealand’s South island.
His blacksmith father, a Dutch migrant, worked in the construction business and
built a forge at home. “He set it up when I was five years old and the day
he finally got it going he was showing off to my mother and did a big fire weld
with sparks flying everywhere.”
Leaning too close to the fire, Gouverneur was burned on the wrist and, although it left a
scar for many years, he was hooked. He would stand on an apple box to help and
eventually became his father’s apprentice.
When Gouverneur moved to Australia in 1984, he set up a
forge at Arncliffe. In 1991 he discovered the Eveleigh Rail Yards, described by America’s
Smithsonian Institute as one of the largest and most intact Victorian workshops
in the world. Infrastructure and rolling stock for all NSW railways was built
in the workshops, which are soon to be redeveloped by the State Government as
part of its Redfern-Waterloo scheme. Gouverneur now works in Bays 1 and 2 of the
1887 Locomotive Workshops.
Gouverneur has done much to recondition and repair valuable
remnant equipment, which he uses in his work and, at the same time, he’s
keeping the traditions of blacksmithing alive.
His dream is to work with “a glassblower, a
silversmith, artists and master carpenters to do somebody’s home, to make an
entire art house by working with other craftsmen. That would be
something,” he says.
He became entranced with “the whole drama of fire”
as a boy in New Zealand.
Source: the(sydney)magazine
July 08 page 43