It took Daniel Vermazen and his carpenter mate Steve Perkin a week of scrambling up tilted gables to replace 200 square metres of Welsh slate on the roof of a small brick church in Melbourne’s ...

Four years ago, 25 tonnes of slate, comprising 14,000 pieces of specially hand-cut and hand-worked roof slate, were shipped from Wales for St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral.

In total 23,500 slates were replaced across the entire roof. Each was placed by hand by the Forster Group team which comprised two slaters and a labourer. “Sustainability is a crucial part of our ...