The Queenslander House

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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, The Queenslander house 

This post has been taken is from my Hub Pages articles, to see more click on the link below. 

Australian houses in Brisbane
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A large Queen-slander, note the pretty design, all the open space on the verandas and also all the open space under the house, which could be used in very hot summer days to catch the breeze and stay in the shade.
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Some fret works that can be found in and outside those old houses, if we think about it, these decorations are nice to have in your house, at least I like them.

The Queenslander House

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our last post, Australia wooden houses. So, in this post we will continue to talk about wooden houses, but the house we are going to talk about is the queen of all wooden house. So, the name that has been given to this house, it is because it has been built in Queensland, but it could have the same name, if it was built somewhere else because of its size and other things, hence it is the queen of all other wooden houses.

So, let me explain, the Queenslander house is a large timber house; some of them are pretty too, and they serve the inhabitant very well, as they have been built to take the advantage of the hot climate, in Brisbane and north Queensland regions, which are humid and hot. Now since I have been working in these houses to maintain them, let me describe them to you a bit more in details. As anyone can guess there are a few different types of these houses, but here to make it easier we are talking about the large real Queenslander and the workers cottage, which is a small and cheaper version of the real Queenslander.

As we have already said above in this post, when the first settlers arrived here, there were plenty of trees around to make timber, a lot of this timber is called hardwood, which as the name suggests is hard and very strong, some of this timber are even stronger and longer lasting than the European oak or other strong European woods. So, the houses were strong and secure, the only natural real enemy of these houses were the white ants (termites), which are able to eat through the wood and destroy the houses. The termites are native to Australia and if one goes up north in Australia one could see strange ground made mounts of earth springing up from the ground, these is how the white ants live, they eat wood from the inside and they make these mounts of earth.

So as you can see this was another reason why the houses were built on stumps. The stumps were made of whole sections of trees that are very resistant to rot; of course the white ants could still be able to eat those stumps, but they were treated with some paints and at the top they all had a capping of metal that would make a barrier to the white ants if they came from the inside the stump and also a barrier to the other ants or crawling insect from the outside.

We have to say that some of these timber houses have been made also pretty, because timber can be cut to different shapes easily, so, they were somehow pretty compared to the house made of masonry, which would be very expensive to decorate them with masonry, so, the houses are usually square boxes with a roof at the top.

Decorative fretwork was easy to make with timber, so, a lot of these houses had some decorations in them, in one way or the other. Now I can go on, and on telling you how these houses were made, but that would be hard to do, so, I am going to search the Internet for photos that could show you what I mean, about fretwork and other timber names, anyhow there are a lot of names given to these pieces of timber that would be hard for me to name, and for the readers to understand what is meant by that name. So, I am going to leave it to your imagination, once you see some photos of the houses and the fretwork in them.

I believe I have said enough in this post, so, see you in our next post, these wooden houses need some care.

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Genzano it story
The Queenslander house
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, these wooden house need some care