Article in the Sydney Sun-Herald newspaper - Sunday 8 February, 2009

Pipe dream rings true at last

Steve Meacham
February 8, 2009

YOU'VE heard of the Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Now meet another Frenchman with ecclesiastical and musical connections - the Craftsman of the Chapel.
For the next three months, Charles Henry, 49, and his son Ionathan, 27, will work high above the ground in one of Sydney's most beautiful private chapels.
Father and son are painstakingly reinstalling the French-made Puget organ in the chapel of Kincoppal-Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart.
It is the culmination of a $400,000, four-year project. The entire organ was dismantled piece by piece in 2005 and shipped back to France.
Ann Henderson, president of the school's chapel society, said: "It is quite probably the most travelled pipe organ in the world, having travelled three times between Australia and France. We are all so happy that it has finally come home."
The organ was built in 1890 in the French romantic tradition by the Toulouse-based family of organ manufacturers, Theodore Puget. It was originally installed in a convent in Bordeaux.
But in the early 1900s, the Society of the Sacred Heart was forced to close all its 46 convents after legislation was passed banning religious education.
Fortunately the Puget organ was sent to the convent at Rose Bay in 1904, though it was not completely installed until 1911. Restoration work was carried out in 1960. Crucially, Puget's original mechanical action was replaced by an electro-pneumatic equivalent.
The organ, which Ms Henderson describes as "a national treasure" because there are only two working French organs in Australia, has 680 individual pipes which have to be refitted like a gigantic jigsaw. Mr Henry and his son, a joiner, are building a new wind chest to restore the organ to its original mechanical action.
Professor Michel Colin will give a rededication recital on the organ in July.