life animating life

It is amazing how we busy human bees are often the byproduct of our environment.  Take for instance the house you live in.  Have you ever asked why its windows are where they are?  Its door, the shape of the roof, the very materials it is built from?  Me either until recently.

While researching the huts and homesteads of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) it has come to my attention that when people arrived on the First Fleet in 1788 they had no idea how to use the resources around them.  They knew how to build a house, but the trees they found were too soft, too hard.  So they got some wattle trees and made their houses like weaving a basket and smushed some clay onto them to fill the gaps.

But they kept burning down.  Well derr! Put a kitchen fire inside basically a pile of sticks and that is going to happen.  But they kept on trying because being a convict means a trip to Australia was a one way journey.

So eventually when they found the right type of trees they built new types of houses.  But they kept burning down too. Sigh! Oh yes, the thatched roof is still made of the old flammable twigs and kitchen chimneys are still being used.  So the guy in charge bans this roof style and luckily people are starting to make bricks and clay tiles.  Phew!

But now the problem is rain and more than people are used to from England.  The answer invent a new shape of roof.  Out with the old pointy roof (gabled) and in with one that has slopes on all four sides (hipped).  Everyone can now sleep well each night ... or so you would think ... did anyone remember how hot it gets here in the summer?  Nope.  For almost fifty years people just threw up houses without considering the sun.  Then some bright spark remembered ... "What do you call them?  Saw them when we were in India or was it America?  Ah yes ... verandahs."  So up they went.  Everywhere.  But hang on.  Now the inside of the house is dark and we only built small windows.  Double sigh.

So with a bit of twigging the verandah got narrower and windows got bigger and faced north.  Lovely. 

On a side note.  A question.  Throughout the past 200 years or so, it seems that Australians have had an addiction with the chimney.  Almost every house has had one no matter how hot the weather.  Many had two. One for cooking and the other for warmth.  Nothing within the historical records gives a reason for this.  Indeed everything points to people not needing them except for cooking.  But there they were.  Are they a hangover from England?  Were they foretelling the coming of Santa?  Or do we just like the sound and light show they provide?