31) Houses

Town Councils in South African towns tend to be very conservative in regard to building regulations and do not like to deviate from the conventional brick constructions so most houses you see in the council areas are either face brick or brick that has been plastered. (In Australia plaster is called ‘render’ and a plasterer is a ‘renderer’ another new word we had to learn). Australian building rules differ greatly and there are houses built with many different materials. There is of course the conventional brick and some very lovely sandstones buildings. There are also many timber houses, I like these, they seem to blend so much better with the environment. Many older houses are built with a wooden frame clad with asbestos sheets, now that the dangers of this material are recognised this is no longer legal but there are many other types of board used to make attractive and interesting houses. Builders often use a combination of different materials to add to the interest.

The most popular, probably the cheapest, building method used at the moment is a wooden frame clad on the exterior with one layer of brick and on the inside with some form of panelling. Housing is very expensive in Australia; mostly because of the high price of building land, so to try and make it more affordable many housing estates are built. Sometimes a developer will buy a large tract of land and clear it of very tree, shrub or bush and build as many houses he can squeeze on to the available space. They are put up as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Someone once told me that these houses have a seven-year life expectancy but I am sure that that must be an exaggeration. The houses all seem to me to be far too big for the plot of land on which they sit. They are also too big for the average family but many people want to have at least four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a lounge, dinning room, a kitchen, a laundry, a family room and an entertainment room. I think that the roof must be a very expensive item so it is made as small as possible, only just covering the walled space, leaving no hangover or eaves. This not only makes them look cheap and ugly it also makes them very hot as the eaves of a house keep the direct sun off the windows. Houses without eaves and no trees in the garden need to have air-conditioning to make them liveable so they are very unfriendly for the environment. Not far from Erina Fair, the shopping complex we did our deliveries from there was one of these large estates. We were told that when it was being built the developers felled every tree, pulled up all the shrubs and every blade of glass so that they could bring in their crew to start the building. They in fact turned the area into a giant dust bowl and the name stuck. To us and many other people the real name of that housing estate is forgotten, we remember it as “The Dust Bowl”

Its such a pity to see these ugly estates mushrooming up all over the place but with the high price of owning ones own home I suppose it is understandable. Maybe I would feel a little differently if I could afford one of them so maybe there is a little bit of sour grapes in my assessment. But in the other older suburbs where there is a mixture of architectural styles,
building materials and a bit of garden surrounding the houses everything is so much more pleasant.

It never ceases to amaze me that although most houses have the same basic ingredients – three bedrooms, a bathroom, a lounge and dining room and a kitchen they can all look so very different. The many ways can one rearrange these items to make them unique and individual, a personal statement of ones own taste and personality, seems to be endless. For the most part I think Australian houses are imaginative and attractive, it is a pity that some of them do not answer this description.