MORE than 30 metres above ground level, balancing on the roof of St Mary's Church, Ben Ashford pauses to wipe a bead of sweat from his brow.

When the sun was beating down earlier this week, he and father Ray spent hours on top of the building, restoring the roof and repairing the leaky sections.

Mr Ashford - who claims he isn't scared of heights, only wary of the scaffolding that holds him up - is used to repair jobs such as this.

"We do churches, schools, copper domes like the one on the Queen Victoria building in Sydney, and copper steeples, right up to modern restorations," he said.

"You get to see some good views and big buildings."

Before arriving in Warwick, Mr Ashford spent six weeks in his Sydney home; before that was an eight month job in Tasmania.

The church roof, he explained, was largely made up of slate, and the order of work was decided for them by the Heritage Board.

"For this job we're using half new slates and half second-hand slates, which is what they asked us," he said.

"We're taking the old slates off and transferring them t to the other side to use. Once they're transferred, we put new ones on the first side."

The pair hopes to begin work on the steeple in a month, where they will hire special equipment to reach the height.

They are also looking for a third set of hands in the form of a local labourer, but said with such dirty, hot work, they were hard to find.

With a task as large as the St Mary's Church, Mr Ashford expects to be in Warwick until Christmas - but that date could change depending on the weather.

St Mary's Parish administration officer Kathleen Cuskelly said the roof had been leaking for years.

"It's only ever had patch-up jobs before," she said.

"The water has damaged the Stations of the Cross, dripped onto the pews and saturated the carpet.

"It's an expensive job but it's good to see something being done to fix the problem."