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I dive for abalone (a shellfish
found on the bottom of the ocean) and my main income comes from this.
When I had the chance to
buy one acre of steep land, facing north, the Mallacoota Inlet and the ocean,
I decided to build holiday flats as an income for future years - as I am determined
to stay here.
Before that I had been
a vocal critic of the local building industry. It has been virtually 100 per
cent fibre-cement "throw ups", without any feeling for the magnificent landscape
and without much imagination.
So now I had to do something
different. I started making mudbricks in 1969 without experience. Two years
and 2,000 adobe bricks later the "experimental" shed was built. It is 40 ft.
x 20 ft. with a section of 20 ft. x 10 ft. separated off (full of shelf space).
It cost $400 in material.
Every wall in the shed
is built in a slightly different way as I was experimenting all the time to
find the best and worst methods of mudbrick laying. Believe me or not, all methods
proved suitable and all walls are still standing.
Earth for the bricks came
from bulldozing an area for the shed and leaving the loose earth (clay, shale,
etc) in a heap in the middle of the future building. There was no water or electricity
on the block, so I used only rainfall moisture to wet the clay and a 4 ft. x
4 ft. driftwood pole to ram the bricks. It was a hard, slow method, but it made
very strong bricks.
Later, with the advent
of water, and later still, with the use of a tandem trailer, mudbrick making
became progressively more easy until, finally, a good day's work amounted to
200 bricks.
With the help of a tandem
trailer, I changed the method of making mudbricks completely, loading the trailer
with mud, either from my own site, or from wherever the Council had dumped waste
clay-shale. During filling, straw was added, so that there was finally a load
of mudbrick soil with sandwiches of straw.
Next, I watered about two
feet of clay down on the end of the trailer. While it was still wet and not
soaked-up, the bricks were made. With this method the water hasn't a chance
to penetrate all clay-molecules and the mixture is slippery and actually much
easier to use.
I assume that the process
of clay saturation continues when the brick is already made and sitting there
to dry. The bricks are as strong and "healthy" as with the ordinary method of
mixing the water into the clay heap and waiting a day for full saturation. Maybe
you could call it: How to trick a brick?
At any rate, it would be
impossible to wet a whole trailer load down. It would be much too heavy. Of
course, the first two feet are the hardest as the trailer is full of earth.
It gets easier as the trailer empties. As each two feet are used up, the next
two feet of soil is pulled to the end of the trailer and watered down.
There is also no need to
walk the mud to the mould as the bricks are made right next to the trailer,
which is moved forward as soon as there is no further room for stacked bricks.
A 10 ft. x 5 ft. trailer holders enough soil for 100 bricks.
The "locals" laughed at
the idea of mudbricks. Everybody was sure that the first rain would melt the
lot. I wasn't too sure about them myself -but again, mudbricks are tough and
only after exceptionally heavy rains was there any loss of bricks.
The local council was very
helpful and considerate, even though this was the first venture in mudbrick
as a building material in the district. The local building inspector from Orbost
had worked in another district which had some excellent mudbrick buildings (one
used by a Prime Minister).
For uprights, I used discarded
State Electricity Commission poles. Luckily, the local private power company
had just been taken over by the State Electrical Commission and all the poles
were condemned to be chain-sawn or discarded.
By that time I heard the
locals calling me "Scavenger" behind my back. At first it hurt, but now of course,
I am glad and proud to be able to successfully recycle materials discarded by
the community at large.
The buildings are all of
the post, beam, fill-in construction, best described by my friends, John and
Gerry Archer in their book, Dirt Cheap (see EG 17). They also live in Mallacoota
in a very organic, very beautiful mudbrick house.
Later again, a long wooden
bridge (320 ft. long to be exact) was being replaced by a shorter concrete bridge.
The builder planned to burn the old bridge! With another friend, we bought the
wooden bridge and Sue and Phil Eather are now living in a bridge-timber-mudbrick
house with a mezzanine floor enveloped by trees.
No need to tell you the
1001 uses of bridge timbers - mainly old 9 in. x 4 in. and 9 in. x 9 in. hand-adzed
pieces. Fairytale stuff!
That brings me back to
the birds. As soon as the flats took shape, I planted hundreds of native bushes,
particularly grevillea. Now there are so many lorikeets, bower-birds, parrots,
cockatoos, honey-eaters, finches, kingfishers and gulls living and working here
that a recent visitor counted 23 species on the ground in one day. This did
not take into account the huge black cockatoos, white-breasted sea eagles, heron,
egrets and gang-gangs flying above.
Since there is no frost,
solar hot water seemed a safe bet and has proved to be not only ecologically
desirable, but economical for the district.
Through the Melbourne Trading
Post (a newspaper for private buying and selling) I bought four secondhand pot-belly
stoves (average price $20.00). They are Romesse stoves and very old. One is
so cracked that you can see the fire glowing at four places around the body,
but they are cosy, efficient, safe and comfortable. The cracks actually allow
you to check the state of the fire without opening a lid!
I talk to my guests about
recycling and each flat has a "voluntary" bucket for organic waste. It is a
sweet and peaceful thing to see a Melbourne businessman trundling to the compost
heap with his kitchen refuse. In exchange I offer free carrots, pumpkins, tomatoes,
and my own specialty - kohl-rabis - from the organic garden, in season.
Kohl-rabi grows beautifully
here and I feel it should be given a strong place in all vegetable gardens.
They grow very quickly, quickly enough to beat the white cabbage moth at times
when the cabbages are hopelessly overrun, and seem to grow the whole year round.
They're nice to eat raw (like an apple), or cooked or steamed.
Newspapers are used to
line garbage bins (no plastic anywhere in the flats, no laminex table-top monsters)
or to start the pot-belly stoves in winter. Kitchen waste goes to the compost
heap, bottles are cut up for a future building project (inset mosaic work with
the sun shining right through the mudbrick walls) or broken up for aggregate
in concreting (such as footings). Cans so far go to the tip (any suggestions?).
The mudbrick flats are
excavated into the hillside. Even though they have a beautiful view of the lake
and the ocean, they are hardly visible from the water or land.
Of course, I didn't build
the flats all by myself. There have been many friends helping, or should I say
many people helping that have turned into good friends. Some just stopped on
their way through and some are here still, five years later. Now there are five
houses going up in mudbrick at Mallacoota. I am living in one of the four flats
and would not consider living in anything else but mudbrick again. Should Earth
garden friends pass Mallacoota, please come and have a cup of tea.
JULY 1983: Since 1977 there
have been about 30 mudbrick houses started, each one being remarkably different.
There are now six flats and I have built a mudbrick house for myself. Diving
continues to be my main income earner. The offer of a cup of coffee is still
open!
JUNE 1991: Since the last
update to this story, much has happened. Good and bad. I got married and divorced.
This is the sad part. Also I have stopped abalone diving and am pretty busy
around the flats.
Possums, marsupial mice,
bandicoots rediscovered their old stamping grounds and despite their occasional
destructiveness, they are very welcome. I feed all the natives to my best knowledge,
and consider it paying rent to the original owners.
Since the flats are now
established and I managed to obtain 77 acres of farmland (three-quarter treed
with a mythical rainforest gully and right next to the flats!) I have indulged
in my passion for birds further and there are approximately 20 different races
of chooks, ducks and geese roaming the flats, the farmland and the two ponds.
Delivering scraps to the
compost heap has become even more rewarding for the "tired business executive"
as there is free birdseed and fresh eggs (blue, green, brown, white and tinted)
to be picked up on the return trip. After all, the chooks and bower-birds rake
over the offerings and what is left turns into sweet smelling humus.
And again, the nearly impossible
has happened. The native and domestic fauna are getting on well together, they
even seem to compliment each other. At any moment my guests sitting in the living
room of their flat might watch a parade of: King parrots, rainbow lorikeets;
next a troupe of guinea fowls might check out if there is any seed dropped from
the bird-feeders; a family of eastern bushrats (they are native that I prefer
to call pygmy wombats, rats sound dirty) will cavort outside the ceiling to
floor windows; Wonga pigeons and satin bower-birds will enjoy the northerly
sun; silkies or Barbu d-Uccles (chooks!) stroll past to some more shaded place,
etc. etc.
And this goes on all day
to be replaced at night by a procession of possums and long-nosed bandicoots,
hoping for a sweet bun, apple or, most enjoyed, a banana.
A two-minute walk down
to the rainforest gully makes one aware that there is good air and extraordinarily
good air. The tall trees must be oozing pure oxygen.
A half hour spent down
there patiently sitting in the shade of fern trees and gain lilly-pillies might
reward the visitor with the call, or even better, the display of the 'resident'
lyrebirds - and with deep peace.
Obviously, I still enjoy
living here and my guests have a chance to recharge their city-worn batteries,
to their delight, and mine.
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