The power station was shut down in 1981 and has since been demolished. The site is now home to the Upper West Side development, comprised of four towers and more than 2500 apartments.
There are still steeplejacks working in Australia, but not enough of them to justify a standalone job category in the Australian Bureau of Statistics occupations database.
You can search for more than 1000 different jobs in our interactive – from accountants to zookeepers – to find their median full-time income, but unfortunately, steeplejacks are not among them.
Here are some more photos from The Age’s archives of people performing rare and unusual jobs. Some of the jobs have died out, while others have evolved into something new.
Night-cart man
A night-cart man would take away containers of human waste, or pans, from homes and building sites in areas that were not connected to the sewer system.
Night-cart man Eddy Sturmey carrying a pan. He told The Age that the bottom of a pan once fell out when he lifted it onto his head.Credit: Geoff Ampt
When The Age interviewed night-cart man Eddy Sturmey in 1981, he had been doing this job for eight years, but acknowledged that it was a fading occupation.
His round took in Ringwood, Nunawading and Box Hill, and each house call cost $2.25.
He said he used to pick up pans from 20 houses in a street, but that had decreased to about two houses a street.
“The job is dying, but although I get a bit whiffy by the end of the day, I don’t want to do anything else,” he told The Age.
Sturmey removing a pan from an outhouse. Credit: Geoff Ampt
Lighthouse keeper
When the lights that shone out of lighthouses became automated, it removed the need for dedicated lighthouse keepers.
This photo is of Point Hicks lighthouse in East Gippsland, which is still standing. However, the keepers’ cottages there have been converted into tourist accommodation.
Allan Stagg, the assistant keeper at Point Hicks lighthouse, with wife Merrilyn in 1982.Credit: Michael Rayner
Milkman
There are no longer any milkmen in Melbourne who deliver dairy products to households each morning using a horse-drawn cart.
When he was interviewed by The Age in 1988, 73-year-old Port Melbourne milkman Claude Butcher was certain he and his 24-year-old horse were the last of their breed.
Port Melbourne milkman Claude Butcher in 1988.Credit: Craig Abraham
However, while it is not a standalone category in the ABS data, milk vendors are classified alongside ice-cream vendors in the cash van salesperson job category. Based on 2021 census data, there are 1381 cash van salespeople in Australia, with a median full-time yearly income of about $55,000.
Lion tamer
This photo was taken in 1996, by which point lion tamers had gone out of fashion, so the article that accompanied this picture referred to Steve Robinson of Robinson’s Circus as a lion trainer.
He said that people who had once come to circuses to watch performers taming aggressive animals now preferred to see people interacting with the animals in a more peaceful way.
Robinson’s Circus lion trainer Steve Robinson with Sultan. Credit: Tina Haynes
Neither lion tamer nor lion trainer show up in the ABS data. However, circus trainers are included in the category “actors, dancers and other entertainers (not elsewhere classified)“, alongside nightclub DJs, film and TV extras and motivational speakers.
Here is a bonus photo gallery of various occupations from The Age’s archives: