manah manah

• Sunday 20 August 2006 - Australiana

Posted in Classic Australiana

Here's some old sheds for Chica. This one comes with air-conditioning...

This one has a clothes line...

And this one has a little bit of everything...

• Sunday 20 August 2006 - Love It

Posted by chica

No-one in the world quite does corrugated iron architecture like we do. It has a style all of its own. The first one is my favourite - air conditioning and all

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• Sunday 20 August 2006 - Comments from a city chick

Posted by AngelaJames

But really, no one would have like live in that place right?

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• Sunday 20 August 2006 - Yes, but...

Posted by gryphonn

...once upon a time they did.

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• Sunday 20 August 2006 - No, Gryph was gammin' you, AJ.

Posted by tinacee

They're just sheds... very OLD sheds. The top one would have been a stable or barn at some stage in it's life I guess, and the other two are storage/garage type efforts. There's no-one living in the houses that they're associated with anymore as they're very old and run-down.

I put these up as a joke, because of another post I did...
http://www.whitepage.com.au/manahmanah/28220/House_Fall_Down.html
Chica replied, saying that she loved the classic Aus feel of it, and mentioned the photo ops that these old sheds give us, so I decided that I'd go out of the way to find her some more to look at.

In this part of the country there are lots of old abandoned sheds and houses. When a family on the land decide that they need a new house they usually just go looking for another suitable site and build another house. In the city the old would be demolished to make way for the new, but I guess if you have plenty of room, that's just seen as too much hard work and unnecessary expense. So the old houses either sit and rot or become a place to store all of that other old crap that they don't particularly want any more.

But that doesn't mean that some people don't live in some pretty dodgy places. A lot of folk on the land are doing it really hard, and sometimes their families have been for generations, so building a new house or fixing up the old one just isn't a viable procedure. Lack of money does a really good job at lowering peoples standards and expectations. I can think of a few that I wouldn't feel comfortable visiting in, let alone living in... but some people just don't have the luxury of that choice. I might include a couple of 'run down but lived in' houses in this series one day.

Edited by tinacee on Sunday 20 August 2006 at 3:32 PM

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• Monday 21 August 2006 - Them were the days

Posted by chica

We've lived in some pretty dodgy places - converted chook house, converted shearing shed in NZ.. And what happened to the good old days when you bought some acres, built a shed with the intention of building a house later, but just kept adding to the shed. In fact, some of our happiest days were spent in a 10ft bondwood caravan, with a toddler and a baby, in Perth in the 70's. On one memorable occasion we lived in the shack, built a new house behind it and then had a bonfire party and burnt the old shack down! Of course, we sold the dunny to some neighbours, it was in such good nick. It's all character building! Thanks Tina, for that little trip down memory lane.

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• Monday 21 August 2006 - You're welcome, Chica

Posted by tinacee

Home is where the heart is, isn't that what they say? When I showed G those photos, he said that he'd live in one of those sheds. Hmmm, I had to diagree with him though. I think I'd like some doors... and a working toilet would be good... and something other than a dirt floor. I do like a little luxury :o) But I guess if I needed to I would. A caravan or a shack (preferably with doors and toilet) would be perfectly acceptable. We've considered living in a cave... that'd be so cool that I think I'd even forego a toilet... for a while at least. We used to live in an unlined silver metal 7x15m shed in the bush, and that was one of the best places that I have ever lived. As I said... home is where the heart is.

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