email updates from Dad

Dad has been making progress at Amherst, see updates below. Thank goodness we have his help, it would be impossible otherwise.

September 17th:

Hi, I have just returned from a day to Amherst to meet with the building inspector dealing with the application for a permit. I met with him for about one hour, but had to get there and back the same day. I took a large load up of wrought iron balustrading, pinepoles for the gazebo, and wrought iron posts to use as needed, or to access material for completing other tasks. I got another load of wood to finish my winter. I will work tomorrow on the stumps and stirrups of my back veranda. I had two days together to do work here, but the inspector could only fit in with Mon, Weds, or Friday, so I took time to meet with him. I have to do some additional drawing of details of the Juliet balcony over the bathroom of the old house. The present plan shows that posts to the ground and footing is the support mechanism, but I made it clear to the draftsman that cantilever beams would support this. I will draw an addenda detail asap and send to you and the council. I am too tired now to tell you all he wants, but will send an email tomorrow morning with greater detail.


September 6th:

I returned home from Amherst at 7pm, to a small party for my Father's day. Pete brought his new girlfriend, and Jenny had been there visiting with Vida since 6pm. I had a great conference with the plumber, who used to come as small lad to your paddock to hunt rabbits when it was Fisher's Poultry farm. I will hear back from him soon as to the cost of a 3000 litre septic with effluence drainage fields. He feels it will be best to proceed directly with Septech though because of the cost, probably near $5000 depending on what specifications John Kelly the health officer requires for the length of the effluence field. But he is going to be the plumber of choice I think for the rest of the old house plumbing. I will explain later in greater detail. I am off to church now so must hurry for now.


September 1st:

I will tell you now of my plan to continue to build the hobbithole, but instead to make it an actual chicken house in the short-term. I like chickens, and it will do it no harm in the course of the construction of the house over a long time for it to be used primarily as a chicken house. So I will continue to dream and use bits and pieces that come to hand to create the dream. Dave said when we spoke of it that this was alright, and after consideration I think it proper to proceed when I feel like it after my work here in Ringwood is completed.


August 29th:

I have completed the roof of the shed except for some ridge capping and spouting and drainage. There has not been anymore rain so transfer is not needed to the upper tanks. I still need to contact the plumber and electrician. I will place the drip system into action for the citrus trees in the orchard when things start to dry. There has been showering rain there it seems.

Dad's caravan & future hobbit hole

Yes, I really mean a hobbit hole. Dad has always loved Lord of the Rings, he even read it to me as a bedtime story when I was only a few years old. I like it too although I skip all the elvish poetry(!), but not to the same extent as Dad.

Dad's dream is to build a hobbit hole and the far hill at Amherst is a good spot for it. So far, he has excavated out a flat section - all done using pick & shovel, which was hard work as it's really rocky up there - and installed a caravan as a temporary shelter.

Here's the first picture of what he's done so far... it may not look that impressive yet, but bear in mind it was a 45 degree slope on the place where he's now put the caravan.

update from Mum about weekend visit

Mum and Dad went up to Amherst this weekend, partly to go to the farmer's market and partly to water the trees, etc. I talked to Mum just after she got home so unfortunately I haven't the benefit of her detailed email description, but this is what she said (in a nutshell):

Gum trees are all doing really well, they've filled out so that they're mostly touching the sides of their frames and their trunks are now the width of a finger. Considering they were little twig stalks the last time I saw them this is pretty good going! They're about 3 inches from the shade cloth at the top of their frames. There have been a couple of light frosts up there which they've survived; we still have to hope they'll be OK through any big frosts to come.

The fruit trees too are struggling on... Dad has now swaddled them in shade cloth on the theory that they might not like wind - and until the gums get bigger they won't be much of a windbreak. We'll see, give them another year, they might just take longer to get established.

Dad has moved the little caravan from Mum's place up to near the shipping container and is apparently thinking of building a carport or something over the top of it and the container with some old corrugated iron roofing material he was given. He's been gathering things as he sees them that might come in handy, including a toilet and washbasin set! He's also used salvaged pallettes to build some wide steps to get into the front door of the old house without having to climb, and cleared out the front right hand room. Now it has some carpet on the floor (remnants) and a couple of old sofas etc. Mum said it's a place you can now go and sit comfortably in, so that's not a bad style of camping!

It's been pretty dry up there still with no rain. One of Tex's (our neighbour) dams is almost empty with just mud in the bottom, although the other is still OK... Ours is getting low again so that you can now see the ridge in the middle of the dam again. But, Dad's been using a lot of the water, pumping it out to refill tanks for irrigating the trees. The olive trees and the fruit trees now have their own tanks (which are full) and there are 2 tanks for the gum trees still and a separate tank for drinking water. It is coming into the coldest part of the year up there now so fingers crossed it gets some rain soon.

more snippets on the hobbit hole

just wanted to jot this down for future posterity... I love all Dad's dreamings about the "hobbit hole"! (This is his name for the rammed earth /stone holiday cottage he's building on the steep hill at the far corner of our property)

He writes:
"I have bought the two tanks for the hobbithole, and by the time you come again it will be a pretty comfortable abode for short stays. Making a shower room is one of the plans, using the old firestove of Mum's for heating water and warmth. This will later be used as a sauna. There will be a baker's oven in the hobbithole to heat it and to cook on and to heat water. But that is a long way off".

I've bought him a digital camera as a present so now it will be a lot easier for him to take photos. I feel like I haven't seen anything of what's been happening there for ages!

hobbit house update

Dad has been clearing out his backyard, where there are all sorts of useful building materials waiting for a purpose. He writes:
"The pile of usable timber offcuts and leftovers from work I will pile on the trailer and take to Amherst for working into the building of the hobbithole. I took a large load up this week, and while up there went to Maryborough to the quarry and brought a tandem load of concrete making sand and a tandem of screenings. I also brought a tandem load of broken concrete patio from Tex's place for building up the sides of the hole to about chest height. I am still considering how to achieve the excavation. I have some options, but none involve spending much money. That doesn't need to be achieve urgently, so I may use the time-honoured pick and shovel method".

hobbit house

Dad is planning to build what he calls a "hobbit hole" over on the steep side of the hill, tucked away behind the olives. I've discovered that this is part of an historical architecture style that developed in the 1920's:

"Storybook style architecture: those charming, whimsical, often
one-of-a-kind structures which defy and transcend standard
architectural conventions to achieve something entirely new: a unique
blend of art and architecture, whimsy and practicality, fantasy and
reality"

LA times article from Jan 2005
Storybook architecture resources

Caravan at Amherst and update on trees

Email from Mum - 1st Jan

During the week, when Dad was at Amherst (I think it was Christmas night or maybe Boxing Day), he saw a caravan and annex for sale in the Talbot general store (read milkbar with a limited range of other stuff) window. 20ft it said for $2200. As the little 10 and 12 footers are now selling for $5000 secondhand, he was interested to say the least. Rang the guy.. went and saw it and gave a deposit, paid it off and got it Friday. the guy towed it up with his four wheel drive and installed it. For $2200 plus $100 for other bits and pieces they put in nad the towing etc etc it was dirt cheap. I saw it yesterday - it is round where the hobbit hole will be, so out of sight fromt he house. the van is all clean, and the lady who used to own it left in a set of cutlery, a dinner set, a doona, cover, two pillows and some pillowcases. It has a new electric wall panel heather, a gas stove with four burners and oven (which has not been used for a while, not this last set of owners) and a frig almost the size of yours. there are assorted shelves and hooks and towelk rails and mirrors on wall and a tv bracket on wall that can be seen from the main bedroom or swivelled through to the kitchen area. The van has served three families to live in whilst they built their homes.. walk in the door, slightly on left is the bunks with small cupboard like a bedside talbe at end and wadrobe at foot, then turn right a little and you are int he kitchen dinetter area, and keep going and you come to a double bed with robes and tiny bedside table. all walled off from each other, and there are curtains to hand=g to make it oprivate if you wish. good curtains on widows all mathcing - windows are louvre sorts, with fly screens - open them and there was a lovely cross breeze. good views.. and the annex is up. they put shade cloth over it too so the van stays cooler, no sun on it, and under those trees - it is where Dad had tried to dig out for the hobbit hole with a far too small machine. the bit he did is JUST the right size for the van and annex, JUST. I was tired, so lay on the double bed and read and snoozed whilst Dad watered the olive trees and the few others he had not watered earlier in the week. then I drove home whilst he slept. This morning we will go to visit Gran.

Dad says you have lost both apricots and a chestnut, and one olive has been eaten to a tiny stalk, but has put out a new leaf and has others forming, so he sealed the wire up again and watered it. The gums are looking really healthy and bushing out, as well as growing taller. But they look established now. all comment on them, how healthy they are. Olives too - the fruit trees though are still I think settling in. We will have to water more often than three weekly - so it will be two weekly, with Jess and Tony doing the next water. Dad has been up there enough on other missions so far that they have not had to go up more than that once when it was the market so was dual purpose trip. We went too that time.

There has been a little rain here and there - one deluge which helped though it was so heavy the water just could not get into the tanks fast enough, so we only got a small part of what fell. We got up there in the morning after it bucketed down up there and the gums were sitting in water filled holes! but generally there has been some rain between each trip, and it has almost replaced the water from the last watering session in the tanks each time.

starting work on the cottage

Dad has decided to make a start on the cottage aka "hobbit hole".

Email from Mum - 16th Dec
Dad has gone up to Amherst. Rang me in a rush at work yesterday afternoon to tell me. He is planning on Friday, today, to do the excavations for hobbit hole which has grown to be two storey suddenly, carport, and garage; Saturday to pour slabs for all three AND get council to inspect. I think he is dreaming but.. reason for all this activity is to give Peter some work to do, stonework / bricklaying whilst he is getting himself sorted out.

My reply - 17th Dec
In terms of the garage / carport, I guess we just have to wait and see what he's planning. I'm not overly enthusiastic about them, mostly because garages/carports are often ugly metal structures! Also, ultimately there most probably won't be a driveway to the cottage itself, the access will be via a walking path only (or cross country across paddocks), so tell Dad not to get too carried away on building places for cars next to the cottage. But I'm guessing anything Dad does could be converted to other uses, so it'll be OK. The reason that I don't want to have a driveway to the cottage is because it will cut right across the main view, not to mention getting in the way of the garden ... Prue was talking about having a wonderful series of cascading ponds etc on that gentle slope down towards the natural hollow. Maybe we will end up planning one in, but at this stage I don't want to insist on it because it might constrain what we can do.

The one big thing is that I don't want any slabs laid in the vicinity of the existing old house so I hope he hasn't done that (although if he has it's not the end of the world, we can always rip it up if it turns out to be in the wrong spot, so don't get angry with him). This is because we're still working with the architect and so I don't want to build anything more that can't be easily moved in the vicinity of (or indeed even in sight of) the house until we have gotten a lot
further in the plans and know what we're doing. We're deliberately not rushing the architect discussions because we want to make sure we think through all the details; also I'm enjoying the planning and dreaming stage so want to allow time to savour it and not rush when there's no need.

Mum's reply - 17th Dec
The carport / garage is near hobbithole but upstream I think, to get water for gravity feed.... and I at least am well awaure it has to be tucked away out of sight, and Dad too I am pretty sure. Carport is for working in in wet weather and garage is for storage I think - Dad has said once that it would be walk only to hobbit hole, no car, so he knows,or knew, that; just that you know how he gets so excited and forgets things. Dad is collecting all the stones and stcking them as it is them Pete will be laying.

We saw a straw bale house on the Q'cliff/Port road last weekend - Dad went to have a look as he was sure I was wrong when I said it was straw bale. Owners lived next door and whippec over to make sure no-one was stealing anything - and they chatted and were nice. Now Dad says the front face (ie out of ground bit) of hobbit hole will be straw bale. Well, it will be well insulated anyway. I had thought the front facade would be stone from local area to blend in, but Dad is putting the stone as the feature wall inside, at the back, up against the earth where it is dug in.

I like the idea of two storey, always have, and your block is steep enough there to do as I always thought - walk into upstairs froim outside ie ground level, and also walk in downstairs at ground level. Stairs of course connect, or a ladder, but if you can't manage them then you just walk around. I have said why make it a straight rectangle. the hill curves round, why can't the house follow the curve too and Dad said no reason at all. so I hope it will turn out to be a portion of an annulus so to speak. Probably not curved at the front but perhaps four or six flat bits like
sides of a polygon. It may be hard to draw the thing up for a plan for the council and permit but I bet it may well be easier to build like that, as the site dictates, than to get every angle and measurement worked out first. For a hobbit hole, that is; not for a mansion or office block or something. I suspect it would have been done like that centuries ago. Just build what you wanted where you wanted.

More discussion on the cottage

When I went to Amherst the first time and saw where Mum and Dad were proposing to build the cottage I said no. It was on the peak of the hill and so would have been in full view. Instead I said they could build the cottage down the other side of the hill, so that it couldn't be seen from the main house (and is further away).

Here's a few of the email exchanges discussing the shape of cottage:


Email to Mum - 25th Aug

Our first edition of Mother Earth news arrived today, and amidst all
the semi-hippy stuff there were some really good articles, even Dave
was impressed.

A great how-to guide on making a natural swimming pool/pond which we
were wanting to do anyway but hadn't got round to finding details.

And an article about yurts. They look quite interesting, not like
camping tents, they can be quite flash. e.g., check out the two
storey one here. http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/stories/s876255.htm

A yurt might be a quick way of getting some housing to live in up
there while we were doing work, and double as spare cottage later? It
would have to be carefully positioned so as not to look odd, but the
one in the abc article above I could see blending in. I'm not totally
sold yet but it is an option to consider

Here are some suppliers of yurts, all in the US but give you an idea of pictures
http://www.advancecanvas.com/index.htm
http://www.nestingbird.com/
http://www.yurts.com
http://www.yurtworks.com/

And it seems like maybe they are good for bushfire protection too?
Found this on a post: "Our 15ft yurt in the Brindabella Valley, NSW,
Australia. It has been up since 1981 and withstood the ravages of the
recent bushfires here in a way that was quite bizarre. Two huge
bushfires that destroyed 300 homes in the capital city Canberra, both
swept over the yurt from different directions a week apart. Despite
there being full petrol containers under the yurt and the fact that it
had been painted with old motor oil, the shape of the structure seemed
to somehow move the fire front over and around the building so that it
didn't burn. No one can work out why it didn't go up as everything
around it was badly burned, but that's my theory anyway".

And here is a link to the only Australian supplier of yurts in kit form
http://yurtworks.com.au
If you look in their photos section you see they are the ones who did
that cool double storey yurt. I can see that working really well on
our block nestled into the slope. It is kind of like a hobbit house
in feel but taller and narrower, don't you think?


Mum's reply - 25 Aug

Yurts are fine - but what about a hobbit hole? Half buried in the land,
just the front showing and even that made with the stone on the site?
Also bushfire "safe" - well safer than a normal house. Stable in
temperature, ie well insulated. You can grow things on the roof because
that is just land.. If a yurt was to be a permnanent thing, built
conventionally, it would not be as easy as a normal house because of all
the angles to be cut. A "proper" yurt is round though the couple I
looked at were something like a duodecahedron or similar.

Although, the yurts do have a sort of feel of a hobbit house.

I was looking at the prices - I am inclined to think, without actually
running to the timber yard, that it is expensive for effectively just
the wodd cut to size. Of course, you are also paying for their
knowledge and working out of the lengths to cut, and the angles - I note
they seem to be 22 sided figures. I also note the windows are cheap
aluminium ones. Add into the equation that Dad has certain things lying
about that he would give you - second hand stuff he could scrounge and
you would never know, and so on. I think you could get a more
conventional room or two built for less than that if Dad did it.

Note that the $5000 odd was just for the frame, inside and outside
lining, roof and maybe insulation - you had to supply all else yourself.

The sort of place Dad was talking about building when you came back in
June would fit in well to the landscape. That was not a hobbit house,
which was something Dad said he would like to build one day - perhaps
in his own back yard. Not that I think his land slopes enough to make
it easy.

My reply - 30th Aug

Yes, you're right, the prices of the yurt kits are a little more than
I'd first thought. But it's an idea to add to the mix. I like the
octagonal shape. I don't much like the canvas traditional ones even
though I know they are the proper yurts.

Dad can still build a house as he was talking about it before at
Amherst, but just not in the position on the top of the hill. e.g.,
Why not on the other side of the hill so it was nestled in the slope,
with a view to the right over to Snake dam, and to the left down the
valley? I think you'd get similar views, albeit not quite as
panoramic, and it would be mostly out of sight of the other house,
except maybe for the roof etc. I don't want it out of sight because
I'm worried about what it would look like, it is more because I don't
want to spoil the effect of the main house being secluded. Also, we
now have plans for the slope up to the top in terms of garden, with a
natural swimming pool/pond at the base.

Mum's reply - 30th Aug

Fair enough - it would be good round the other side of the hill. We
were trying to make it out of sight of the hosue itself you know - it
would be much lower than your house so you sould not see it, though the
roof of your place would have been seeable from the little place. But,
it would certainly have been visible from the drive and the road and the
far side of the hill will not be.

email minutiae: Mum's idea of holiday cottage

Early on Mum and Dad asked whether we would consider letting them build a holiday cottage on the property, but then it seemed to morph into granny flat. Hopefully now it is back at holiday cottage for occasional stays as we don't really want to have anyone else living there permanently if we can avoid it... Anyway, here's the initial exchange of emails:

Mum's initial email - 6th March 2004
When we were measuring, I said it would be lovely to be able to have a little place there. I was not going to say it, but Dad said to before you got planning. Is it possible you would agree to a little place or two being built? You were talking B&B, so this would really just be that. A little unit with a bedroom, lounge/kitchen or sucjh. Jess and Tony could bisit, me, Dad, whoever. nice to be able to maintain some privacy if needed. You could put such a place out of sight of the main house if you wished.

My reply - 7th March 2004
Actually, I was already thinking of planning in space for a separate cottage which could be used for B&B or just rented out for short holidays, and also used when people come to visit. It wasn't going to be top of the list in terms of building, but I was going to plan in space for it. The idea at the moment is to create a series of garden "rooms", but also build in some long views too. I don't want to count just on the views though down the valley because I have no control over them remaining... so want to take advantage of them but also have a secondary plan that is easy to implement if someone builds a horrible house next door and blocks it. Anyway, the cottage would effectively be in it's own garden room so screened naturally from the house. Do you remember how the cottages at that place in Belgrave were screened? They were a lot closer than this would be but they were well done in the sense of blending in and feeling secluded.

Email from Mum - 27th March 2004
A few weeks later Mum referred to it again: I said I had asked about a granny flat - Jess said it would be a good idea! Later joked you two should hurry up and build them as it would save us all having to go into a nursing home! No-one would care if you went about in your nightie at 5pm for example.

My response - 29th March 2004
On the "granny flat", not sure what you mean by this but just to avoid confusion... all Dave and I have discussed and he has agreed to is to build (eventually) a separate self contained small cottage we could use for friends/family to stay in for weekends / whenever they came and visited, and also suitable for renting out for B&B as that would be one of the ways we'd hope to make some income in the longer term. We weren't planning on it being close to the house or set up like a nursing home flat, which is my interpretation of "granny flat"?