And the walls come a-timblin' down
from w
Isa lei, the machines are at it next door as the cute little white house is demolished to make way for four units! Oh dear, what would Bill think? We had a lovely old man living next to us, he was once a jockey, and we used to chat a bit. He grew older and frail and died and then his grandson took over the house. Today there are a few tears as Bill's daughter looks on (she lived here as a child) and the cruncher has broken up half the house in one hour.
I was told that the house was second-hand, and had been brought to this site from Barwon Heads where it was near the riverbank in the early 30s. No-one seems to know just how old the house was, but probably over 100 years. Then someone said, 'Wendy, maybe your house was one of the three brought in from Barwon Heads!' But our loungeroom area is modern so how come? Okay, perhaps renovations in the 60s changed the whole look of it and strange greyish fake brick stuff covered the original weatherboards.
Peceli took photos last week to show the cute house.
Now the cruncher picks up roofing iron like tissue paper and drops it into the heap. Now our own house is shaking like the devil as the demolition takes place. It's like an earthquake here!
Bill's daughter standing in front of the house 9 a.m. before the demolition.
Two hours later half the house has been knocked down.
(later) By 6 p.m. the block had been totally cleared and had become just bare earth and our house had stopped shaking!
Isa lei, the machines are at it next door as the cute little white house is demolished to make way for four units! Oh dear, what would Bill think? We had a lovely old man living next to us, he was once a jockey, and we used to chat a bit. He grew older and frail and died and then his grandson took over the house. Today there are a few tears as Bill's daughter looks on (she lived here as a child) and the cruncher has broken up half the house in one hour.
I was told that the house was second-hand, and had been brought to this site from Barwon Heads where it was near the riverbank in the early 30s. No-one seems to know just how old the house was, but probably over 100 years. Then someone said, 'Wendy, maybe your house was one of the three brought in from Barwon Heads!' But our loungeroom area is modern so how come? Okay, perhaps renovations in the 60s changed the whole look of it and strange greyish fake brick stuff covered the original weatherboards.
Peceli took photos last week to show the cute house. Now the cruncher picks up roofing iron like tissue paper and drops it into the heap. Now our own house is shaking like the devil as the demolition takes place. It's like an earthquake here!
Bill's daughter standing in front of the house 9 a.m. before the demolition.
Two hours later half the house has been knocked down.
(later) By 6 p.m. the block had been totally cleared and had become just bare earth and our house had stopped shaking!
Labels: demolition of a house, Geelong houses
posted by Peceli and Wendy's Blog at 3:05 PM
7 Comments:
Hi Wendy - at last I am back to a bit of blogging. I have been doing art stuff - but for textile exhibitions so I can't publish it for the moment. we have this demolition scene all around us here in inner Canberra. I've done several quilts on it, including one with a big heap of fabric scraps, representing all things in a home with a big yellow digger on top. They put up new houses which supposedly have good energy ratings but they all have air conditioning and are so enormous, the embodied carbon will take years to 'pay off' let alone the running costs.
Good to see you are back Alison. Into quilts - how fabulous.
Re the new houses - there are some huge houses going up in the outer rim of Geelong - maybe for two people - four bedrooms or more. Stupid. When we brought a choir of 88 Fiji people to Geelong one time, the visitors were astonished to find that some elderly people lived alone in large houses. Big enough for ten people they said!
w.
I just noticed I'd typed 'a-timblin'' instead of .a-tumblin''. Oh dear the dementia is setting is, but okay, 'a-timblin'' sounds okay anyway!
w.
What a nice little house, and to make way for units. I heard a man this morning on ABC radio talking about why there are only one or at the most two people in these houses its madness. here we have huge holiday houses used for perhaps at most a month a year.
I think it is hard to see what was once a home for years and years be crunched and "a timblin'" in just hours. There is something about walls that have enclosed families and their stories and their loves and hates and arguments and celebrations. Thank you for the pictures, and for the remembrance of someone's home.
I felt sad seeing the house go down. In Santa Monica where my mother lives, people buy the quaint old bungalows for a million dollars and tear them down to build giant McMansions on the lots. They call those houses "dozers" for bulldozers.
Peceli and I were talking about the idea of recycling as much as possible because there is so much junk now at the rubbish tips, -stuff that can't be recycled. Cute houses trashed in hours and you are right about McMansions Jana, because they are certainly like boxes on the hillside.
This episode next door got me talking to Bill's daughter about her life there as a child - we had barely spoken to one another in years - just 'hello' coming and going to visit her elderly father, and later on, her son. So I must ask her next time about 'our house' - what it was like in the 1940s! And what were the neighbours like then! We've been here 15 years...I think. Thank you Penny and Karla also for your comments.
w.
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