Forever House #14

Sunday 19^th May, 2013.



a dozen lantana bushes pulled oub by rope tied to my tow bar



Less than an hour ago I was pulling out my dozenth lantana for the afternoon just on dusk. If I was stinging from prickly pear last night, tonight I’m certainly feeling the affects of lantana scratches all up and down my arms. I finished everything else I had on my agenda today at three odd so decided to try pulling some lantana out with a rope and the tow bar on the car while ever there was still light. Once I had started I couldn’t stop – knowing full well I was giving my arms an absolute beating. My bucket bath tonight was a tad ouch but I’m clean apart from my hair which will have to wait until I can have a proper sluice outside in the sun tomorrow after lunch when I’m getting ready to go home. That’s the worst thing about having my bath in the caravan after dark – I can’t upend the bucket of warm water over me at the end.

My arms are smothered in sorbeline cream – so I’m not feeling too bad now that I have settled in for the evening. My dahl and rice is in a bowl atop a pot of simmering water. I hope the bowl copes – I think it could take a while.



Another foggy morn – and hard to get out from under that cosy warm doona. I dressed in a fresh set of mudding clothes today not wanting to put my prickly pear outfit from yesterday back on. I was on the job just after eight, mixing mud. I had a lovely day sculpting and placing nooks and crannies in the wall.



timber block for picture hook



Wall in front entry -

a couple of spots for keys and things

mirror and bowl feature in second bedroom

And now having trialled the whitewash, I am envisaging all the internal mud walls white, which I have never done before. I’ve always loved the natural colour of the mud. Until now I had thought the only reason I would coat the walls with anything would be to stop the probable fallout of mud from the walls every time they are brushed or bumped. I thought when I coated it I’d like to see the mud colour through the whitewash. But now that I’ve seen how it might look I quite like it a definite white. You can still see the hand shaped contours of the mud. I’m not so wedded to the mud showing through now. Next time I come out I’ll make a brew using less lime, more boiled linseed oil and the snot and see how well that comes up.

I started the circular bottle design today, and found a spot for Susan’s dressing table piece. I have had to rearrange the scaffolding so I can get up higher. I also had to re-mud a metal wheel into the wall between the smaller bedroom and the dining room. It came home to Tuckurimba some time ago so that I could work on the stained glass design. I’ve cut out one section of the design and should be able to go on with out the metal wheel to refer to. It needed to be back in the wall because that’s where I am working. Dave and Gab helped me yesterday to get it out of the back of the ute and into the wall with the mold over the top half to mud over. It’s all happening! I did a second coat on the toilet door and window frame, and a second coat on the whitewash.

I am having a ball.

The dressing table top Susan gave me,
above the manifold candle holder

I think my dahl is done – yum so good.

The only visitor I had today was Gab. She usually walks over in bare feet but arrived by 4WD wanting to ask me a favour. She’s training to be a Northern Rivers Wildlife Carer and has her first patient, an eight inch blue tongue lizard which has been unlucky enough to become a play thing for a couple of naughty puppies. Their owner came home to find the dogs had cornered the lizard and inflicted it with a couple of puncture marks. Gab was asking me to take it into the wildlife vet in Lismore on my way home tomorrow. Too easy – she just has to keep it alive between then and now.

My work boots have given up – they were part of my uniform issue when I worked at the Sheriff’s office back in nineteen ninety eight or thereabouts. I’ll have to pay the disposal store a visit before returning to the farm – the soles of my feet are in touch with the ground.

Forever House #13

Saturday 18^th May, 2013

Phew. Weary me. Have achieved most everything I set out to do today. After about eleven hours of sleep. So rare for me usually burning the candle at both ends – up late at night and then awake early for the gym most mornings. I’m lucky if I average about six hours a night in my normal life. I went to sleep about eight-thirty last night and woke this morning about seven thirty. Fresh and ready to go. I think it helps me to write down my plan, as I did last night.

There was a heavy fog this morning – couldn’t see out the caravan windows. But by the time I’d dressed and had my porridge most of that had lifted and the day was cloudless and blue, although a sharp wind if standing in the wrong spot. I need to get on to the paw paw cream for my lips this eve and rehydrate my body. I need to drink more during the day. Since dark fell I’ve had a bucket bath in the caravan over a tarp, and there is a dahl and brown rice simmering away on the stove. It’s cosy in here with both burners going. I got smart on this trip and only opened one window and made the bed up with the heavy doona with a second folded up beside me at the ready. I wore socks, trackies and a long sleeve d top – so was cosy all night. But there’s a wooden board between the mattress and the bed base and I’ve been meaning to remove that for ages. I did this morning, and hope the hardness of the bed is not replaced by a banana bed softness. I think the board was largely for when Jeff and I are here together – so we don’t roll into the middle. We’ll see how it goes with just me tonight.

Green dunny door - protection from weather

Today first up I dug and sifted six barrow loads of dirt. That should get me through the next two days mudding. Then I painted the toilet door with green paint found here in the shed. It must be at least ten years old. I added a good dose of water and stirred it briskly and the consistency was fine. But as I walked with the tin and brush out to the dunny I realised the paint was slowly oozing onto my self and then creating a puddle on the ground when I set it down. Without any container large enough to decant the paint into I just went on painting the first coat. And very smart it looks too. I found a small container and poured as much as would fit; the rest is still in the lidded  leaking tin. I’ll do another coat tomorrow and I guess that will be the end of that tin of paint.

Yum, I’ve now got a steaming bowl of dahl and brown rice, topped with yoghurt, next to me as I write. A feast. And there’s enough for tomorrow night. Good food for my circumstances here with an esky for refrigeration and simple means and space for preparing food. Camping food. I could almost invite the neighbours in it tastes so good. Fresh coriander is the key I think.

After painting the toilet door, and in an effort to use up more paint, I painted the raw timber window frame in the loo that will hold a small stained glass panel when I get around to making one.

Next job – carting water. I brought out a couple of extra buckets I found at home. The ones I have been using at the farm are getting brittle and not coping with carting water. As I came back up into the house from the water tank with the first couple of buckets full, Gab, Dave and their two sweet white dogs Zina and Lily arrived for our plan of attack chat. Always lovely to hang out with them; their age, attitude, energy, skills. A few more like them would be fantastic for Currawinya. There are currently a couple of improved shares, and also a couple of unimproved Company shares, for sale. We all hope these will bring more good people to our Currawinyan world.

Dave will get on with the metal framing that is needed above the block walls, to bring the house to lock up. I am coming out again for five days over the Queens Birthday Long weekend. I’ll lay four rows of mud which should bring the walls to the height of the door lintels. Jeff will come with me and we will make a plan of attack for the power, water, ceiling and insulation. There there’re ten days in early July when the Forever House will be a hive of activity with Jeff, Dave, me, and my sisters Peita and Danielle all beavering away on various parts of the project.

First coat of whitewash on the mud wall - OMG!

After Dave and Gab wandered off for lunch, I finished the water carting and then I too took a lunch break . In the afternoon, I trialled a whitewash, without the casein power or quark my internet recipe called for. I used PVC glue in its place. So the recipe was lime, boiled linseed oil, PVC glue and water. I brushed down a square metre of wall, then sprayed it with water, and on went my mixture. You’ve no idea how exciting it was to finally be trying this. And it looks amazing. I think. Probably whiter and more paint-like than whitewash. The recipe says three to five coats. I think two would be plenty unless I watered it down a lot more.



Prickly Pear on my block to make 'snot' for the whitewash


But I don’t want to use PVC glue, or bondcrete as the binder. I want the mud walls to be able to breath. So I went off with a bucket and a big sharp knife and chopped a bucketful of prickly pear off a bush along the road from my share. There are three really big plants there that I have left specifically to make ‘snot’ for my walls. My memory is that you soak the plant in water – so that’s what I’ve done. I now have two buckets full to the brim with chopped prickly pear and water soaking. And that is what I will trial next time I am out; lime, snot, boiled linseed oil and water if needed. I’ll google some more and find a recipe using snot.

Snot brewing in a bucket ready for next visit

My work clothes and skin, even after my bucket bath, have lots of fine prickles imbedded from the prickly pear. I’ll have to take much better care in future.

pairs of bottle bottoms taped together ready to mud into wall

And the final couple of jobs I got done this arv were to tape the matching bottle halves together ready for tomorrow’s mudding – and I went down to the river flat and collected two containers of course sand from a huge stash dumped by the last flood. The only thing I didn’t get done was to chop more straw – so I guess that’s first up in the morning.

Full belly, clean body, weary bones. 7.26pm! Maybe an Ecco, some paw paw cream on the lips, a little read and another big sleep for me.

Forever House #12

Friday 17^th May, 2013

Three rows of mud - a weekend's worth or work



Another long weekend here at Currawinya. I did get my three rows of mud completed on the last visit. Can't imagine over what time span it took me to do the previous three rows. The rock in this picture replaced the glass window shelf I had put in – the window didn't last the night, I found it shattered into a squillion pieces when I went to work on the Sunday morning. I had a lovely time mudding various things into the walls over sunday and Monday last visit. There is the manifold candle holder to the right of the pic. I left myself with no prepared materials to go on with this weekend. Realistically, I aim to get 2 rows done this weekend.

I have come loaded up with lots of extra curricula options this time. I did take home all those bottles. And on the way home I dropped in to see my friend Susan at Mallanganee. She and Bill are mad collectors of all things old, interesting, beautiful, historical, Australian. She took me out into the shed to see what she could find to contribute to the mud walls. She gave me a lovely timber piece which was once the top of an old dressing table that held the mirror. It has a cut out design and a couple of shelves. I bought five clear glass balls from her that may have been fishing floats originally. She also has a chest full of pastel glass light fittings, and I am hoping to relieve her of almost all of them – for a price of course. Susan is collecting very specifically to build a stock for the wonderful shop she and Bill are planning to open next year. They live in the most gorgeous old building in Mallanganee that was the bank. There’s a great big room at the front – the bank – and the business is called Bankhouse Originals. I am prematurely grasping at some of her stock! Like a kid in a lolly shop. 

bottles with the necks cut of f

Anyway, over the intervening two weeks I have watched a few youtubes on cutting bottles. The cut edges will be inside the walls so there is no great need for a perfectly straight cut. And I didn’t want to wait for a bottle cutter to be purchased and delivered. So I opted for the demo by a young girl where you wrap wool several times around the bottle where you want it to snap, and tie it off. You’re supposed to take that wool off the bottle and soak it in nail polish remover, but I leave it on and drizzle the nail polish onto the wool until  soaked. You have a sink full of cold water at the ready, light the wool and turn the bottle slowly as it burns, keeping the warm air in the bottle; just as it starts to extinguish you submerge it in the sink and voila! Just below the wool, the bottle pops apart with a fairly clean straight edge. Close enough for my purposes anyway. Over several nights I cut eighteen bottles, the first nine pairs for the design. The are here at the farm now ready to go in the wall. I bought some clear tape to bind them together at their cut edges.

I have also been Googling ‘whitewash recipes for mud walls’. I have a number of different ingredients to mix and trial while I am here this time. I was given a recipe years ago but have lost it and the little notebook that has lots of mud house building snippets of interest. I must have another look – I would have put is somewhere safe! That recipe uses ‘snot’ as the binder – snot being the product you get when you soak prickly pear in water for an extended period of time. I may get some soaking to try next time I’m here in three weeks time. It should be snotty enough by then I hope. Though I think I was told it soaks for eight weeks. I’ll do a bit more research about that.

On this occasion I don’t have any snot soaking to trial so I’ll be blending ingredients such as milk powder, linseed oil, PVC glue, lime, water and possibly Bondcrete. Not all at once but in combinations, to see which works best. I’ll paint them on to the wall below the kitchen window, which will eventually be under the kitchen sink behind  cupboards.

And I have a paint brush and green paint to paint the loo door.

Tomorrow’s plan is to dig heaps of dirt, cut heaps of straw, cart many buckets of water, and collect a load of sand from down by the river. Then I think I’ll paint the first coat on the toilet door and start playing with whitewash. Sunday and Monday will see two full rows of mud laid. I’ve brought the metal wheel out to put back in the wall between the second bedroom and the dining room. Dave can hopefully help me with that when he comes over to chat about the order of things.

Dave and Gab are going home to SA for a family fix over June. He plans to get a bit done on my place before then, completing the metal wall where it meets with the block wall near the front door. I’ll get another four day weekend mudding while he’s away. Jeff is hopefully coming with me on that occasion to do a power/water/insulation and ceiling reconoiter. Then in July, I am taking leave from work and coming out for ten days. Whoot whoot! Jeff will join me for some of that time; and by then Dave will be back from SA. I think we will be working on the ceiling/insulation/wiring. I’ll mud as I can, and my sisters Peita and Danielle are also coming out for several days each. It’s all happening. I think this blog is actually really helping me with the momentum. Peita wants to do some tiling – so I think she can make a start in the main bedroom. Not sure if Danielle has a particular activity in mind – she’s an artist so I imagine she might either mud with me or make a start on some of the mosaics for the floor. I have all the terracotta coloured tiles stacked up in the middle of the main bedroom – I’ve had them for years! My intention is that anyone who wants to should make a mosaic the size of one of those tiles to be laid randomly in the floor.

During the week, I followed up on a work colleague, Eliza, who said to me ages ago she had a couple of French doors she was looking to sell. I was hoping I could get a set in preference to that set of windows I got from Quan last visit. I did buy one of Eliza’s sets of doors and they are beautiful. It’s very helpful having a Forever House Fund – which I’ve been  transferring one hundred dollars a week into for the past few months so that I can pay Dave and also buy what I need. The windows Quan gave me have another spot earmarked; two of the three will be turned on their sides and placed above the three point six metre sliding doors out on to the verandah. They will be perfect there as highlights. 

Daylight saving having finished sucks. It’s seven-thirty Friday night and I’ve been in the van for two hours already. I could probably do with a read and an early night. They reckon a frost is likely this weekend. Clear skies and westerly winds.



Forever House #11

 Saturday 4th May 2013

I was right about that nip in the air. At various times during the night I closed the windows by the bed, then I closed the door. I put on socks and a jacket – and eventually threw a doona over the existing blankets. Finally... sleep. But I got off to a slower start than I’d planned – I’d thought eight but started nine thirty after filling and laying out in the sun three solar showers to get clean by this afternoon. 



Bathroom/laundry walls very close to the roof

I probably had enough dirt to do me today but I decided to spend the first hour or two digging and sifting anyway. I now have enough to do me tomorrow, but again will get up and replenish my materials so that I can keep up my momentum on Monday. By Monday arv I hope to have done three rows of mud around a part of the house I haven’t worked on for a while. I’ve been working around the bathroom kitchen for the longest time.

On reflection that is because they are external walls and I have been working towards lock up, therefore trying to get those walls to the roof. I have reached as high as I can go in that area – the ceiling needs to go up now, and the wiring and plumbing. Then I will mud up to the ceiling – which will be interesting but I’m sure I’ll find a way.

I have to start thinking backwards and getting things done in the right order. Had I been really on to it I would have been mudding conduits into the walls to carry the wiring, and pipes for the plumbing. But I deferred that stuff believing it’ll all work out in the end. I was keeping things simple stupid. I do have a few ideas about the utilities and have run them past various people over time. I seem always to make up my mind about things as they come up in front of me, based on information I collect along the way. Don’t forget I have been doing this house for eight and a half years or more – so I have been collecting lots of bits and pieces of knowledge, ideas, and of course paraphernalia. And fortunately I am married to a very capable power and plumbing assistant.



Part of wall I am working on currently
between the dining room and second bedroom

Now I am mudding from the other end of the house near the front door, around the second bedroom which is also the dining room wall, and then along the wall between the second and main bedrooms. I need to bring these walls up to at least lintel height. Then the ceiling becomes the focus. I estimate I have about seven rows plus a bit to get these walls up. I can do a row per day, that’s seven days mudding left for the time being. I’ll have two more done by the end of this weekend – I calculate another two long weekends should do it. The 17^th to 20^th May is my next opportunity – I just put it in my phone calendar.

Now that I am mudding at a rate or knots, I have to find homes in the walls for the many items I have collected for the purpose.

Car window shelf  before it exploded overnight

For instance I had a car window, a flat sheet of thick glass that had one rounded corner. Today I placed that in the wall where I had earmarked for it. It’s a neat little shelf you pass on the left as you move through the front door and down a stair into the lower living area. Tomorrow I have a part of a manifold I’m told – not sure where I found that – which will be a candle holder in the dining room wall above where the glass cabinet I have been traipsing around with for the last thirty odd years will live when furniture finds its way into the finished Forever House. 

I also have a heap of coloured bottles and they will virtually all go in the wall between the two bedrooms. I am taking them home and getting myself a bottle cutter. I don’t want the necks of the bottles to stick out one side of the wall. The bottles in the bathroom have their necks to the outside, but in this current bottle design both sides of the wall are internal, and I want the glow of light to be apparent from both sides. Once the necks are cut off, I am going to tape two like bottoms together. They have to fit the 250ml thickness of the wall. I have made a design with the number of pairs of bottles. It will have a circle of clear flagon bottles around the circumference, with a coloured bottle between each of those, and then another concentric circle of coloured bottles within that – blue green and amber. There are I think fifty two bottles in all.

I had visits from Dave and Gab, Daphne, Stan, Karen Symons and Molly. My share, I have decided today, is the best location of any share. I'm on the driveway about two and a half kilometres in from the front gate; two-wheel drive at a push. I had a two wheel drive when I bought here. And I think once it is finished it may well become a pop in house. I don't think I've ever had one of those before. 



I'd never met Karen and her daughter Molly before - although they have been share holders since the early 1990's. They know well Tony and Vicky, the people I bought my share from. It was lovely to put a face to a name. Karen said she'd been reading my blog - very cool - and asked if she could hand the link along to Vicky. Of course! I'm hoping all interested Currawinyans past and present (and maybe future) will come to the housewarming on the long weekend in October 2014. I think my next Currawinya project after the Forever House, is to do an oral history of Currawinya - collect recordings and pictures from everyone who wants to share their story of Currawinya.

I finished late and had a lovely warm bucket bath. To complete my wonderful day, I went to Quan’s with failing light to see what I could find in the way of windows for where the arches were supposed to go in the lounge dining room but I’m using the arches in the new dining room at Tuckurimba. I’ve been on a mission for something appropriate to take their place in a thirteen fifty wide hole with no upper height restriction, times two. Well today I think I may have got what I need.  

A set of French doors in a frame with a stoop and all, for the front picture window, and a set of three shorter windows for the window beside the front door. And to top if off I found a lovely, if old and in need of some love, front door. Like the arches, I have had two other doors  previously earmarked for the front door of the Forever House, and both of them have made their way into the Tuckurimba house. So it was fantastic to find a sweet old thing today to grace the front of the mud house.

Everything I got needs significant work. I may take them home once Dave has the measurements, to work on them there on my other available weekends. Add them to the list of jobs I have for the dining room kitchen at Tuckurimba.

I am seeing the Forever House in my minds eye – beyond this structural stage which will soon finish, and into the whitewashing, tiling, mosaics, pathways, gardens, kitchen, bathroom, furnishings – and it feels so good. I love my loo – it is the beginning of the final leg.

Forever House #10

Friday 3rd May 2013 Well, here we are again - at the caravan table. It's just after seven at night - but it's been dark since 5.30 or so - daylight saving has finished so I doubt my musings here at this table will be when the sky is the colours of the setting sun. It is autumn and the days will get shorter for my next several visits.
I'm so excited. Even though the last time I was here was 24th March - work did not stop on the Forever House. I have a new loo! Thanks to Dave, my new Currawinyan offsider. He and I had a chat about that being his first project when we met in March. We talked of using saplings growing too close to the house, as the uprights and frame; and basically to use what he could find laying around the worksite to enclose and roof it. He also found a door in the shed which I need to paint to protect it from the weather. The rose bush (which is of the mean prickly variety) was saved and here is the delightful result.

I couldn't be happier. It is a strong and functional version of its old self. He even kept the original river rock effort I had made, and the painted besser blocks my sister Fran had done for the Andy-built version of the loo. Now it is my job to make a small panel of stained glass for the  singular window he placed at eye level as one sits.
After circling the loo several times, trying it out for comfort and taking pics from every angle, I unpacked the car, got into work clothes and set about putting the remaining two hours of daylight to good use. Actually what I did next was to take out of the ute the purchase I made at the Antique shop in Casino on my way out today. I have been eying it off for quite a while and had stopped to check the price on a previous trip. $65. So, on my list today was to stop, being a Friday during working hours, and purchase this stunning shower screen from an earlier age. It reminds me of Nellie Nana and Pop's bathroom, my Dad's parents' house in Putney Point on the Parramatta River in Sydney - with its etched screen and glass jar full of sculpted pink and blue shell soaps sitting on the end of the bath. I asked the Antique Shop for their best price and got it for $60 - very happy with that. I am in love with it - I have saved it as my screensaver on my phone. I can see it in the Forever House bathroom already.

The 44 gallon drum that sits at my mudding station for the straw was empty, as was the blue water drum. There was no evidence of cows having been in the house I was pleased to find. I remembered to bring out the axe so chopped the remaining straw - which filled the drum. And I did a good number of trips back and forth from the water tank with full buckets of water. I might add to the pile of sifted dirt by digging first thing in the morning, then I will get as much mudding done as I can during the day. Dave is coming over around ten to talk about what next. I'm excited to thank him for creating a dunny totally in keeping with the Forever House aesthetic. It took him twenty two hours and all he had to buy were dyna bolts for the stirrups at the bottom of the poles. My $340 loo.

My friend Susan, another Currawinyan with her partner Bill, lives at Mallanganee - a little village I drive through on the way out to the farm. She has invited me to join her at Keith Cameron's property on Plain Station Road Ewingar for some kind of creative festival. Way back in 2004 I bought all my metal from Keith for the Forever House roof and a couple of the front walls where a metre-or-so-high stone wall had survived the fire, and my brother in law Andy built a metal wall on top of the stone. Keith sells metal and farms cattle and soy beans. But he is also a prolific metal sculptor, facilitates metal workshops and has other sculptors working in residence in his massive shed. I am looking forward to going and seeing what this festival is all about on Sunday. There are stalls, food, music, art exhibits. I am going to invite Dave and Gab to join me for the outing. I'll have to work hard that morning before I go.

I also have made a plan to go and visit Quan tomorrow (Saturday) arv after I've done six or seven hours of work. Quan lives on Currawinya about 2 wild kilometres drive away. She and her late husband, Peter, arrived here from the Riverland in South Australia around the same time I did. Peter circumnavigated the world twice, according to my cousin Christine, with the number of miles he drove back and forth between here and the Riverland, bringing his many and varied (and I mean many and varied) chattles onto his and Quan's share. I'm not quite sure what he planned to do with most of them - he could have built a small village and provided vehicles for twenty families. But we will never know really what he might have done with it all, because sadly, he had an accident in an ultralight traveling home from SA at the end of 2010. He passed away in a manner fitting a man who was into everything. Quite a character was he.
Peter had taken aluminium windows and doors that were excess to my needs after I bought a job lot from a recycled building materials place on the Gold Coast. In return, Quan is going to let me look for a front door and some windows suitable for a couple of unaccounted for window openings we left in the block wall in the lounge room. I have some cedar arches which were bought on ebay from Melbourne especially for these openings - and the openings were made especially to fit those arches - but the arches are now being used in the new dining room at our house in Tuckurimba. I have in mind to use sets of French doors as windows in these spaces. I need to get something suitable so Dave can get on with building the metal frames above the block walls. See the picture - we only had blocks to take the wall so high - so we have to fill in the gap above it.

A few big days coming up - into bed with an extra blanket - there's a nip in the air.