gone to a good home

Fiat 1100, 1961. The last time it was running was in 1990. At that time it was in good order until the motor suddenly stopped working. It might simply be a broken part in the distributor. Since 1990 it's been sitting outside, mostly under a tarp. The subframe is sound but there is some rust on the body and I suppose some of the parts have deteriorated or seized up over the years. It would be a project to get it going again but the basic parts are all there and it comes with a full set of workshop manuals.

May 2006 - I sold my house

The photo shows bluestone paving around the front doors. The doors are old double swinging doors from a pub and I've set them into solid Celery-top pine poles.

my house

The northern part (left side of the photo) of the house is a hexagon and contains the kitchen, dining, lounge and study areas in an open-plan type of space. The hexagon has lots of windows in the northern half and a wood fire in the middle, making it light and airy during summer and warm and cozy in winter. On the right is the bedroom. Behind the bedroom is the toilet and bathroom. Separating the northern and southern parts of the house is a glassed-in vestibule area. There is also a separate studio.
My house is at Oyster Cove, 35km south of Hobart.

lounge

The lounge space.

dining

The dining room...well, it's in the same space as the kitchen, lounge and study. The kitchen and study are separated from each other by an internal mudbrick wall. In the middle of the hexagonal room is "Warmbrite", the wood fire.

kitchen

The sink is set into a Celery-top bench and the cupboard framework is Celery-top with Tas-oak and corrugated iron doors.

view from the bedroom

The glass ceiling.

bathroom

The wall separating the bathroom from the bedroom is a curving wall made out of corrugated iron. It's got the same green-colour on both sides, with insulation in between. The bathroom is a work in progress. It has a shower, hand basin and washing machine. It has enough room for a bath but I'd have to evict the washing machine.

paving

I paved outside the other front doors using local bluestone.

the view

Bruny Island in the distance.

looking towards the SE

Around the house is a wide area of mown grass which is a fire break in the event of a bush fire. In the 21 years I've owned the property it has never been threatenned by fire.

Bracken is my friend

This view is looking towards the west. The bush in the background and the hills behind the bush protect the property from the worst of the weather that sometimes hammers Tasmania from the west and south. In the foreground is lots of bracken fern which has an undeserved bad reputation. I've found the bracken a very useful plant nursery. Young trees are protected by the bracken from summer sun, winter frost, competing grass and browsing animals. Once the tree is higher than the bracken it starts to out-compete the bracken and then other understory plants can regenerate.

Hobart to Oyster Cove

Between Bruny Island and the mainland is the Dentrecasteaux Channel. The region on the mainland-side of the water is simply known as The Channel and is widely recognised as being one of the nicest regions in Tasmania. Because of the Channel's popularity is has become busy recently but Oyster Cove has remained a quiet locality, partly because there is no township or industry (apart from farming) and the highway is over a kilometre from the water.

aerial photo

The house is the light-coloured area visible in the upper-left of the property. Thanks Tom for the photo.

site plan

The empire.

house plan

Large windows in the NE, N and NW facets of the hexagon collect sunlight throughout the day. During winter nights solar energy is released by the slow-combustion fire. The trees on my property use solar energy to extract carbon from the atmosphere and convert it into wood, then I chop up the wood and burn it to release that energy. I grow more trees than I chop for fire wood so my property is a carbon sink.

climate

This is what the weather does at Oyster Cove....on average.

weather deficiency

Lightning display over Bruny Island. One of the few things about Tassie I don't like; there are not enough thunder storms.

aurora

The Aurora Australis over my house. I usually see an aurora 2 or 3 times a year, sometimes they pulsate like someone is playing with the light switch and occasionally the whole southern sky is glowing red.

water

The 5,000 litre tank on the left collects rain water from the shed and carport and the 12,000l tank on the right collects water from the house. About once a month I use the petrol-driven pump to pump from either tank to a 7,000l header tank which provides gravity-fed water to the house. The pump can also take water from any of the 3 tanks to feed the white fire hose in the event of a bush fire. All tanks are Aquaplate. The lowest the water level has ever been is half capacity.

the dam

Down the north-east corner of my property is the dam. I don't use the water so it's a great place for the wildlife and it's never even looked like going dry. In the background is my house.

botanica

Since 1985 the property has mostly transformed itself from a grassy paddock to regenerated bushland. During that time I've taken a photo of every native plant that has regenerated itself.

the wall and the invention

On top of the concrete slab is a low rock wall made from a light-coloured sandstone. Before I bought the land in 1985 the sandstone had already been blasted to level the building site. On top of the rock wall are mudbricks made from the local soil. The rocks in the foreground are bluestone from the local Red Hill quarry.

Whilst fitting the sandstone blocks together I thought about a method where several rocks first pass through some sort of 3D scanner then a computer fits them together and outputs instructions to the builder as to the position and orientation of each rock. I'm in the process of taking out patents on the method. I've called it RockSolver. Have a look at www.rocksolver.com

photo record of the building process

I've got an album with photos showing all sorts of building methods during the house-building process. It also contains photos of pipes and cables in trenches before they were covered over so I know where not to dig in future.

tactile timber

Most of the timber furniture and fittings, like this Huon Pine table and the parquetry floor, have been oiled using a hard burnishing oil based on tung oil. I did this so that when I touch the wood I'm actually touching wood. When timber has been coated with some sort of varnish or polyurithane then what you touch is plastic. Also, I prefer the look of wood rather than the look of plastic-coated wood....but that's just me.

Storage

The inside of my studio/shed where I lived from 1992 to 1998 whilst building the house.

Lawn mower

I mow the lawn once a year, late December or early January. Then for the rest of the year the grass is kept under control by teams of Bennett's Wallabies (one pictured here), Pademelons, Potoroos and Native Hens.