Key points

• George Spiteri and Ronnie Dalli have been laying bluestone slabs on Melbourne’s streets for more than 50 years.
• They have seen the city’s footpaths change from asphalt to terrazzo concrete pavers to Melbourne’s iconic bluestone.
• They work in rain, hail and shine and say lifting the 50-kilogram bluestone slabs keeps them young.

George Spiteri and Ronnie Dalli have been laying bluestone slabs on Melbourne’s streets for more than 50 years, and in that time have circled back to the streets where they began.

Spiteri, 79, and Dalli, 71, have seen the city’s footpaths change from asphalt to terrazzo concrete pavers and then to Melbourne’s iconic bluestone.

Ronnie Dalli (left) and George Spiteri lay a bluestone slab in Flinders Lane, Melbourne.Credit:Chris Hopkins

They work in rain or sunshine and say lifting the 50-kilogram bluestone slabs keeps them young.

Spiteri says the secret to doing such a physical job for so long is not taking a break.

“Just don’t stop, keep doing it,” he says. “If sometime the boss gives me another job, I will say, ‘Look, don’t keep me on the job for too long because if I go back [to paving], I’m going to have a sore back’.

“You get used to it, when you are used to it, you have no problems.”

The pair have witnessed great change over the years but say the bluestone has persevered.

“I’ve seen a lot of change,” Dalli says. “We’ve got machinery now – not like before, when everything was by hand.”

Dalli says the bluestone they laid 50 years ago is still holding up well, but the bricklayers often redo paving in parts of the city because of changes in designs and plans.

“We did the City Square 45 years ago, then 10 years later they want to change things again,” he says. “We did the [Vault sculpture] there, we worked on that too.”

George Spiteri (left) and Ronnie Dalli at work in Melbourne with new team member Koat Nyun. Credit:Chris Hopkins

Dalli expects the bluestone team will return to City Square once it reopens after the Metro Tunnel construction.

The two both began working for the City of Melbourne, but in 1995 contractor CityWide took over many of the council’s services, including paving.

“We used to work with the council but we said, ‘We stay with the new company’, and we are still here,” Dalli says.

“We said, ‘We are in a new ship – if the ship sinks, we sink with it’, but the ship is still floating.”

Dalli arrives at the bluestone yards at 5.15am every day for a coffee and a chat, before starting work at 6am. He says he has no plans to retire.

“I’m happy what I’m doing, and I think I’ll keep doing it … I reckon if we stop, we kick the bucket,” he says.

However, Spiteri thinks his 80th birthday next year might be a good time to hang up the tools.

The workmates will take a break over summer, when they usually go on a caravan holiday together to a different spot.

Previous holidays have been spent in Mildura and Shepparton, but this year they will take their caravans to Geelong with one rule: “We have an agreement that there’s no talk about work,” Spiteri says.

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