News that Telstra Tower is re-opening has caused a flurry of excitement (Black Mountain was like Pitt Street on the weekend) and no-one’s more excited than former elevator operators Sharon Dodds and her bestie Tracy, who worked at the grand opening in 1980.
As teenagers (they lied about their age), the best friends were hired over four weekends of the Tower’s opening, to escort VIPs such as former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and his wife Tammy, plus the Crown Prince of Thailand. The star-struck 16-year-olds even escorted the cast of TV drama Prisoner. Those were heady times.
Such was the public’s excitement that thousands flocked to the opening every couple of hours and it was up to Sharon and Tracy to herd them into the elevator and out to the viewing deck.
“We would take a lift full of people up and it would be full to capacity,” Sharon said. “So we’d have to hold the lift, start bringing people down before we could actually let more people up. It was insane.”
If these high-schoolers had a dollar for every time someone remarked “I bet this job’s got its ups and downs”, they’d be rich. Actually, they were rich because Tracy said their pay was $270 each weekend (two 12-hour-shifts) – big money for a couple of kids in the ‘80s (although they were supposed to be 21).
“I think we were getting about 10,000 people through a day and free ice creams were given to children from the kiosk in the viewing gallery,” Sharon said. “Kids were dropping ice creams everywhere, it was chaos.
“It got to the point where we’d have to let 100 people out before more could come up because the viewing gallery was that packed. Weight-wise, it could only take something like 280 people.”
Amazingly, Sharon still remembers interesting stats about the tower that she memorised 44 years ago.
“The structure of the tower allows for an eight-metre sway either side, if it didn’t it would snap in a strong wind,” she said. “Its height is 870 metres above sea level and I remember after a long elevator shift, we’d feel seasick.”
After the hectic four-week grand opening, Sharon continued working at Telecom Tower (as it was then called) inside the token booth, where her name-dropping continues. She met singer Roy Orbison and his entourage, who were dining at the revolving restaurant. Sharon said he asked her out for dinner (he would have been 40 at the time) but she politely declined.
“When Malcolm and Tammy Fraser came in, I remember taking her up in the lift and the tag on my jumper was sticking out so she tucked it in,” Sharon recalled. “I said oh no how embarrassing and she said don’t be embarrassed my dear, it’s a size 10.”
Sharon and Tracy are still best friends and they’re both thrilled about the ACT Government and Telstra’s plans to redevelop and reopen the tower.
“It really is a beautiful, beautiful building and the views are sensational,” Sharon said.
Telstra Tower closed to the public in 2021 after tourism operators labelled the state of the site an “embarrassment”. Telstra and the ACT Government plan to refurbish the tower in a way that celebrates Ngunnawal culture, and expects to have a cafe, shop and observation deck when it reopens (no confirmation on whether it will include the revolving restaurant).
