This type of house were built id the sixties. Today they are being renewed.
Dear readers, we
have said that we are going to write about DIY brickwork and other building
things, which we believe can help people that are willing to try DIY small
building or repairs, but first let me explain how I acquired that knowledge
myself.
When I came to
Australia in the sixties I ended up working in the building industry, we were working
mainly on fixing old houses, or building new house from scratch, units and
warehouses, so, I ended up learning how lots of building things were done, in
the end I became a bricklayer, and have worked most of my life as a bricklayer.
Anyhow, in this
article we are going to write about; the Australian housing industry in the
sixties; Working in the Australian housing and building industry; Earning and
saving money if you can; and Working with this Italian builder.
We believe that the
Australian housing and building industry, is one of the major employment
industries in Australia, you can say that this is so in other countries. But I
believe that in other countries building new houses is not as important as it
is in Australia. One of the reasons for this is that Australia is a new
country, it needs and takes in many emigrants. In the sixties Australia was
taking emigrants in a regulated way, now because the population grows steadily
also accommodation need to grow steadily, therefore, new houses need to be
built to keep a steady balance. This building of new houses gives opportunities
for the newcomers to be employed, since there is manual work involved,
therefore, a healthy cycle is created; but even with these opportunities the
building industry has its ups and down, as we know. So, let us talk about it
and try to make sense, if we can.
You know, the housing
building industry and real estate work together to complete the cycle of
supplying to the public what is needed, so, both have their ups and downs and
it cannot be avoided. It could have been helpful if one could foretell what is
going to happen next year, on the housing market, but it is not possible to
guess what is going to happen in the future. If people can know this, then they
could make money, since they could invest their money at the right time.
Now, for those
buying a house and saving to buy a house. We are going to write another article
about buying houses, because now I want to tell my story about working in the
building industry, building houses.
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Working in the building industry
As I have said, when I came to Australia from Italy, I ended up working in the
building industry. Now let me explain this working position, working on
building in Australia is a temporary job, because even the employer is subject
to the same opportunities of work and he cannot help it, therefore, one is
never sure what is going to happen next, when the job you are working on is
finished, therefore, there were concerns about our employment status, so, we kept
asking ourselves, whether our employer would get another job to do, before we
finished the one we were doing, but even though we were thinking that, we still
worked hard to finish the job on hand, as soon as possible, because to find
work you had to be competitive.
Well I should say that although this small
Italian builder did lots of small jobs, it did work out all right most times,
so, we were able to move from one job to another all-around Brisbane and to
other close by town/s. Of course, this would cause worries if you had no
transport of your own and you had to rely on some friends or the employer to
take you on the work site, where the building was going to be built, but we
managed somehow.
I remember that there were times, when I had
to get up early and catch the first tram to the city, and then I had to catch
the second tram to another suburb, where the builder would pick me up and drive
me to the onsite job, in the evening after eight hours or more of hard work, I
had to go back home, which took again a long time, but anyhow we managed all
right, after all we were here in Australia to earn money, so, as long as we had
a job to go to and earn money, we were happy to do that. You see, on building
sites workers can earn above other people wages, but there was this uncertainty
because there was no guaranty that the work would last, and it also was hard
work all day long.
Anyhow, it was a good job with good
opportunities to learn and improve your knowledge of building something yourself.
You see, in those times we could improve our working and earning position more
easily than today; it was possible then because a lot of things were simple,
and therefore, they could be done just by using your common sense. Of course,
there were always inspections from local authorities to follow, but once you
knew what it was required they were easy to follow, if you used your brains
diligently, therefore, we should say that we had more opportunities then
compared to today opportunities. I believe that it was so, because the building
we were building were small houses, so, if you were a tradesman, you most
likely could be the builder as well.
Having said that, now let us see, how this
type of work affected us newcomers money-wise. However, this post is already long enough, so, see you in our next post, where we talk about money and working for this Italian builder.
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