Chalking it up

Contractors, suspended in a crane’s man-cage, remove numbered bricks from the Dunedin Gasworks Museum’s chimney yesterday.

The bricks are removed by hand, catalogued and stored, and it is hoped they could be used for reconstruction.

The 25m-tall brick chimney was damaged by an earthquake in March, which aggravated existing cracks in its top section caused by corroding metal attachments.

Work to dismantle the top 6m of the chimney began two weeks ago and is expected to take at least another week before the situation is reassessed.

The site is a category-1 historic place owned by the Dunedin City Council.