One of the West Coast’s most admired stonemasons has hung up his legendary rock-breaking hammer Thor, calling time on a 40-year career after carving one final piece at Sceale Bay.
Andy McComb moved to Venus Bay in the late 1980s chasing surf and fish, but when he combined a passion for stonework with building a home – now a celebrated feature of the small fishing village – a great stonemasonry career was born.
Four decades later, after Andy has completed his final large-scale piece – a dry-stack rock wall in full view of the ocean – his legacy stands proud right across Eyre Peninsula.
In the Gawler Ranges old ruins have been restored through Andy’s calloused hands, in backyards along the coast stonework pizza ovens and fire pits bring social occasions to life, while closer to home at Venus, the town entrance sign remains one his personal favourites.
The decision to retire from large-scale paid work has not been an easy one for Andy and is not due to a lack of motivation, but rather a genetic eyesight issue which means the stonemason cannot drive or be as attentive to detail as he once was.
“Working with rock is a passion, I’ve enjoyed doing it, it certainly hasn’t felt like a job, but I’m legally blind now, so it’s a bit like doing brail,” he laughed.
“When you’re carving stones, they’ve got to be really close, just a little lump will stop it fitting together, so now I just rub my hand over it, and I can feel those spots that I can’t necessarily see anymore. I knew it was going to happen, as you get older most people’s eyesight deteriorates a bit, but mine’s a lot worse than other people.
“In your heart of hearts you think, well someone’s paying you, and you’re not doing as good a job as you probably used to.”
The revered stonemason mulled over the curiosity that the finished product of his rock art was often in opposition with the “cold, hard” nature of rock itself.
“It all looks a bit sceptical when there’s boulders and stuff lying around on the footpath, but in the end, people seem to describe my stonework not as cold and hard like rock, but they come up with words like beautiful, which is always a funny way to describe stonework,” he said.
“I’ve worked on lots of projects on really wealthy places, often the only thing people notice is the stonework, it’s got some sort of attraction for people, there’s certainly some gratification in creating something people like.
“When it’s all put together, you stand back and you can’t really remember putting any particular ones in, but I find the whole thing very mesmerising.”
The 63-year-old has had one particular tool by his side for the entirety of his 40-year career, a great rock-breaking hammer known as Thor, which will now only be brought down on personal projects.
“Thor… the God of Thunder. Everyone in town knows when Thor is out trying to crack big rocks,” Andy laughed.
“It’s a decent hammer, I kept breaking all the handles, so we kept making bigger and bigger handles until I could hardly lift it.
“It’s getting a bit too much for me now, a quarrymaster in Victoria gave me it when I was first starting out.”
While Thor took on a character of its own across Andy’s jobs, the timeworn tool never lost its place by his side.
“I can jackhammer the rocks, it’s certainly a fair bit easier, but you don’t get as good a variety of rock – the big hammer is the go.”
Asked what other secrets there were to the trade, he said it was all about patience, and lots of it.
“You’ve really gotta lock into the long haul. It’s pretty daunting when you’re looking at the footing and the huge pile of boulders, but it’s one by one,” he said.
“Because you’re concentrating all day, the days just fly by, you have the music going and get lost in your thoughts, suddenly it’s knock-off time and beer o’clock and then we do it all again.”
For many of his jobs, Andy has shaped each stone to fit perfectly into the jigsaw arrangement of rock he envisages.
“Ten people could use the same rock on a job, and it would end up in 10 different styles,” he said.
“You’ve gotta find the right rocks and carve them so that it fits in with the other ones around it.
“Sometimes you’ll spend a long time on a rock, and it’ll break at the last minute or get smashed, that’s pretty frustrating, and you have to start again. But the joy is at the end you’ve created something, I don’t know what it is about stonework, but people just love it.”
The stone home Andy started to build in the late 1980s became one of Venus Bay’s many attractions and continues to draw attention from mesmerised visitors.
“I guess it’s pretty unmistakable, I’m quite proud of it,” he said.
“I was selling stubby holders here at one point, I’m right on the scenic spot where everyone comes to, so I’d have people here all day, wanting to know about the house.
“So I started selling stubby holders to people, they could ask five questions and hear the story of the house.”
