Australia wooden houses

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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, Australia wooden houses
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Australia wooden houses
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This type of houses shown here, were very popular in Brisbane, when I came in the sixties. They are average houses that workers could afford to buy, they usually have three bedrooms, a lounge room a kitchen a bathroom and some of them even a dining-room, when the kitchen was not large enough to dine in. Some people call them the worker cottage, because they were built manly for the workers, since they were cheap enough for them to buy.

Australia wooden houses

Dear readers, we have written a few posts about refugees in the world, which affects the Italy as well, since I am a Italian we have posted them in this blog of, Genzano it story, but today we would like to go back to my life story, starting from where we left off last time, so, this post is the continuation of the post, welcomed at my Brisbane address, this post is the continuation of that post, and we are going to talk about the Australian wooden houses.

Let us talk about, the convenient and pretty, wooden houses in Brisbane and Australia. When we came to Australia in the early sixties. We should say that we had a surprise, when we found that the houses here were made of timber, which were very different from the houses we had left in Europe, all build of solid masonry.

For us Italian migrants, that had lived all our lives in solid masonry buildings, even if some of them were rustic solid buildings, when we arrived in Australia at the beginning, it seemed a strange thing that in Brisbane lots of houses were made of wood, and most of them were set on wooden stumps, but then we started thinking, after all they were still good to live in anyhow, so, we got used to live in them rather quickly.

So, we had to forget about how we used to live in our motherland and also my native town of Genzano di Lucania, since now we were living now in Australia the Australian way, after all as the saying goes, when you are in Rome do what the Romans do, and we did just that; but then, what were the reasons and why these houses were made of wood, or to use another word for wood how the locals called it here, they were made of timber.

So, as you can see, this question arises, why these houses were made of timber and not masonry? And then try to see if they were better or worse that the houses made of bricks or masonry. If we use logic reasoning there is no difference whether houses are made of timber or masonry, as long as they are able to give the people that live in them that filling of safety and privacy that we aspect from them, when we live in our own home, they have fulfilled their role.

Having said that now let us see or guess the reasons why these houses were made of timber, and why they were set on wooden stumps.

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Wooden houses on stumps

The wooden houses on stumps of Brisbane and Australia

As we have already said above, in Brisbane a lot of houses are/were made of timber, but not only are they made of timber, they are set on wooden stumps. So, let us see the reasons why they were made this way.

From what explanations, we have heard from the locals, and also by using our own imagination and intelligence, one can come to the conclusion that there were several reasons why houses here were made of timber. The first reason is that when the first settlers started to build Brisbane, there were plenty of trees that could be cut down and make very good timber to build those houses; and then the people that came to live in Brisbane and Australia had a very good knowledge of how to use timber, since they came by boats and in the boats of those days, because they were mostly made of timber, there were always carpenters and carpenter tools on board, in case the boat needed some repairs, so, to use timber and build timber houses was the easiest way for them, since they had the knowledge the tools and plenty of timber in the woods surrounding Brisbane ,an also other parts of Australia that needed houses.

At the beginning the houses were just simple shelters, but as the time went by they became better and better, because the builders also became aware of what would work better in this climate, you see, here around Brisbane and northward, when the wet season comes the ground becomes too wet for the houses to stand on the ground, in hot summer days everything becomes too hot and there were lots of vermin on the ground, so, they found a way how to build houses that would avoid most of these problems; that is why in those times the houses on stumps became a necessity, of course slowly they became even better and even pretty, that is how the Queenslander house was born, which is a large timber house with verandas around them, that keeps the weather and the hot sun off the main walls of the house. One can see these pretty Queensland houses if you look around even today.

I believe that I have said enough in this post, so, see you in our next post, the Queenslander houses.

See you soon.

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Genzano it story
Australia wooden houses
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, the Queenslander houses