City’s best office view

HOW’S that for a w work k station?t Brad Judge, owner of Hobart off- ground maintenance company Ropeworx, has been putting up with this spectacular view while he paints the 55m communication tower on top of kunanyi/Mt Wellington.

DESPITE the daunting weather conditions and physical exhaustion, Brad Judge would still rather work from the top of a TV tower than behind a desk.

And with views like this who could blame him.

Mr Judge owns Ropeworx, a Hobart company that offers off-ground maintenance work.

He has almost a decade of experience in rope-access work and for the past three weeks has been painting the 55m steel communication tower atop ku- nanyi/Mt Wellington.

The work involved scraping off paint and rust from the tower, which services WIN TV, Southern Cross and TDT, and recoating it for protection. The tower hasn’t been painted for about seven years.

Mr Judge said the work wasn’t for the faint hearted, with strong winds, rain and cooler conditions making his career pretty daunting. In fact, the conditions have stopped him from finishing the maintenance until summer.

“It’s very stop-start because some days you can’t even get out of bed due to the conditions,” Mr Judge said.

But that’s not the only danger, with radio frequencies also posing a threat.

“The radio frequencies can actually cook your internal organs so they are bumped down to a tenth of their capacity,” Mr Judge said. Regardless, the thrill-seeker said he wouldn’t do anything else.

“Some days you wish you weren’t doing it, climbing up and down 55m is so tiring. But from my point of view, I would rather this than sitting at a desk looking out a window.”