here we are back in adelaide for the xmas-new year period. as usual i get sucked in to local things, and so i just registered to adopt the street tree out the front of our place. it has not looked well for a few years, when all the other ironbarks in the street look quite healthy. i think it is dying of thirst. since there are water restrictions in force, i need approval or assistance to lay drip hoses out the front of our property.
next door, all the trees have gone. people moved in, cut down all the trees and bushes higher than head height, and now do not live there but come occasionally to do renovations.
it’s a peculiarly australian failing, what robin boyd (1960: The Australian Ugliness) called “aboraphobia”. or, as the old aussie motto (sardonically) says: “If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn’t, chop it down”. two doors up, we have a vacant lot. when we moved here in 2005, there was an old stone double villa, built about 1870. after it was sold to notable local developers, there was consternation about the house being demolished and also the trees being cut down in the back yard. i have detailed the story of the trees elsewhere…
the old houses of adelaide are constructed of what they call ‘bluestone’, it is some sort of shale or slate. they are quite cool inside as the walls are so thick. originally they came with wide verandahs on the front to shade that side of the house, and to allow sitting and sheltering from sun and rain.
the old house, 2 doors from our place, with trees at the back, used to look like this:
- house, c. 1870, next to next door
it was number 23…
- No 23
after the new owners took over, they made the house “secure” by erecting locked gates, behind which they one day set about taking down the trees until the council officer could get a court order to let him in with the police – by which time the trees had been effectively removed. this is what the house looked like one year later. note the iron gates and the pathetic stump of the grevillia robusta – the other large eucalyptus leucoxylon having already been removed before intervention:
No 23 with gates and tree stump
and now, all that is left of 23 is some piles of dirt:
no house at 23 now
the developers submitted a plan to council to erect two two storey houses with a 2-car garage each, a gym, an office, an home theatre and 4 bedrooms in each, all decked out in the most modern minimalist decor. the local residents, already incensed by their high-handed tree removal activities, all wrote objections. some employed lawyers to do so on their behalf. the council rejected the proposal, but the developers appealed to the state government… who also rejected it! yay! couldnt happen to a nicer bunch of uglifiers.
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in our case, a previous owner of our house, P’s great aunt, had removed the verandah, left the patio, removed all the trees and garden, concreted most of the backyard and added a small brick lean-to at the side. then she had painted most of the walls white – apart from the exterior stonework thank goodness.
here’s basically what our place looks like now, from the driveway:
front of our house in adelaide
inside the lean-to, the old stonework has been painted white. i asked and we tried various methods of removing the paint. sand-blasting leaves sand and also means the stones would need re-mortaring. steam leaves lots of wet on the old wooden floors, and infact was not good at removing old paint of this order. scarifying with a sanding tool was long and involved. chemical methods would have gassed us all. and we did want to use the space. here’s what it looked like – note the white-painted rough wall whch used to be the outside wall of the house on the left…
inside the lean-to all cleaned up ready to paint
and so, not liking white for walls (or for much else), and not being able to bring myself to add another layer of plain paint onto the stonework, there was only one solution. paint back the stones!
so, last year, before i took off for finland, i occupied myself with the wall.
mid-way through painting the stones back in
luckily, just outside the window, i had the originals as model. they are not painted realistically, but impressionistically! you can see the difference in the following photo with the view through the window:
inside and outside stonework
…even though i didnt manage to finish it completely before i left for finland, the Precious cat gave his seal of approval to our new sitting room…
precious occupies new territory
to conclude this long and meandering set of observations whose only thread is the work of stonemasonry and its gradual deletion from the scene – at least in its former glory – i present a rousing rock protest anthem by one of the better sydney bands of the 80s, Spy vs Spy, in a video clip that is more than 25 years old….
and, in a former life, i presented the lyrics (inscribed below) to one of my better classes in japan as a sort of verbal puzzle, then asked, after their discussion of the answers, what type of music they thought would go with these words. a ballad, they suggested. a country& western tune, another offered. they all agreed that such a song would not be common in japan…
stonemasons are becoming things of the past
now the modern age is finally taking us over at last
dont you wonder why
they’re tearing all the old houses down
can’t they see that they’re the best places around?
dont tear it down
there’s life in it yet
dont tear it down
there’s time for us yet
dont tear it down!
don’t you know that history is written there deep in the walls?
but the march of progress just wants to pour concrete over us all
craftsmanship – this stone was cut by hand
bulldozers are taking over the land, yeah
don’t tear it down…
an expressway was planning to come through our lounge
eviction notes in business coats
never renovate it just tear it down
a nation’s heritage they wanna bring down without a sound
another new town on top of the real town, yeah.
don’t tear it down…
