by Sharyn Munro
We’d cover the bricks to slow down the drying at first and in a day or two we could stand them up. A few more days and we could stack them. Mudbricks were simple!
At first we’d panic if we saw rain clouds moving across the valley towards us, and would race to pull across and weigh down black plastic over the piles of bricks, or later, the rising walls. If we did, the rain would not reach us; if we didn’t, it would be a downpour. Eventually, tired of wrestling with long strips of windblown plastic, and with the elements, we gave up. The bricks coped better than we did.
Our legs and arms became very strong: mine from carrying water uphill, his from tromping and shovelling mud. At the end of a batch, we’d trudge up to our camp to make a fire for desperately needed coffee. Covered in flakes of drying mud, our heads drooping with weariness, aching arms hanging heavily at our sides, we felt as Neanderthal as we probably looked.
But we had the brickmaking sussed. We got quite efficient at laying them too: slap the mud mortar on thickly; wriggle a brick down into it, mud squeezing out; catch that with the trowel and use it for the next brick—easy.
It was what we made as we laid the bricks that didn’t prove so easy. We broke two of the three basic rules in the old proverb ‘Give a house a good hat, a good coat, and a stout pair of boots and you can’t go wrong.’
We went wrong.
The hat was good, as it should be, given that the olive-green corrugated roofing and its supporting timbers were the major new materials bought, taking a great deal of the $2000 our cabin cost. The mud was free and the recycled doors and windows were dirt cheap! To my everlasting regret and mystification, we didn’t insulate that roof when it would have been easy and we had the money.
The boots were bad. My excuse is that the site was meant to be flat. The old bloke can’t have had his eye in the day he ‘levelled’ it, as, although it was closer to level than before, one front corner was more than a metre lower than the diagonally opposite one.
Not only would more bricks be needed, but stepped footings instead of flat. With all the hassle of working these out to fit brick lengths, we forgot about reinforcing the footings. We just threw rocks into the trenches and poured cement in to fill. In the next drought year, as the clay shrank, the unreinforced stepped footings cracked. The walls did too, but only up to window and door sills, and they were only skinny cracks. I filled them, and that’s how they’ve remained.
Keen to start laying our mudbricks, we’d also forgotten about the cement-stabilised mudbricks that were supposed to be laid first; we just rolled out the dampcourse and slapped on the mud. What saved the base of the walls over the years was the brim of the hat; we’d at least done as told in extending the eaves.
As for the bad coat, I don’t know why we didn’t render the walls like the book said. Some render recipes used cow dung, and they emphasised that it had to be fresh! Maybe that put me off all renders. I also now see that our bricks were too clayey, and yet I’m sure we did tests on the soil. We were proud of the ‘natural’ look of the bricks and didn’t want to cover them up, but why didn’t we do even a light rubbing over to smooth the craggy bits into the inevitable cracks that such clayey bricks developed?
Perhaps because we’d never seen anyone else doing mudbrick, only read about it. Or perhaps because, with the tent disintegrating, we just needed to move in. When mere mortals do this, things remain at that stage for a long time, if not forever. But it could also have been because our relationship was starting to break down, the bush dream showing signs of becoming a nightmare. We’d probably ceased to care. Sorry, house.
The lack of a good coat most greatly affected the western wall, our bad weather side. Since that gable end was intended to join up with Stage 2 of the house, we even used an internal quality door. It was, after all, going to be an internal wall one day soon. ‘Soon’ still hasn’t arrived.
The first big summer storm raked that western wall into millions of corrugations, most obviously in the mortar but also in any dips in the bricks. Succeeding storms over twenty years deepened them. It looked dreadful, but it was only superficial damage. Mudbrick walls are tough.
When I moved back here, my new partner and I immediately added a front verandah, almost as big as the cabin, and slapdash enough to be the subject of a tongue-in-cheek article for Owner Builder, ‘ The Nah Mate Building Standard’. I grew deciduous vines to cover up the roughest bits, as well as for summer shade under the clear roof inserts in front of the doors and windows. I practically live out there in warm weather. It’s popular with a few of my wild neighbours too.
After a while it got too hard managing overnight visitors in the one-room cabin, so we decided to build some quick bedrooms by adding a narrow skillion off the back wall, tucking into the bank behind. Except the bank turned out to be mostly bedrock, a slow crowbar job. The new back wall was built up in rock against the bank, well protected from damp.
On top of the rocks is a window wall of diamond-paned scavenged sash windows, halved and turned on their sides into Tudor-type casements. Through them I can watch the crimson rosellas feeding on the blue flowers of the rosemary or the pale orange claws of the grevillea, only a foot away, at my eye level—one of the advantages of building into the hill. Beyond them rise the smooth trunks of the blue gums above the track.
The eastern end was built up in rock to low window height, that is, my bed height. A slab of white mahogany from a large fallen branch made a broad sill for two double casement windows from our magpie collection. I love casement windows because they can open right back, disappear, and let the outdoors flow in. From my bed I look out to the distant mountains, and in winter I often wish I felt just a little unwell, so I could lie on my sunny bed and read without guilt. Those nuns have a lot to answer for!
As no heat gets through my old western wall on the worst summer day, the new one had to be of mudbrick, on top of rock. Making mudbricks for this, I could feel every one of the twenty years’ difference in my muscles. Mixing the mud in a wheelbarrow was heavy going, and by the time I’d added the dried grass, I could barely drag the larry (like a hoe blade with two round holes in it) through the mix.
This time I enjoyed using mud in a more free-form, sensual way, to meet the uneven rocks and around the green bottles inset for decoration and light, moulding, wetting, smoothing. When the bedroom addition was weatherproof we removed a central window in the back wall of the original house and I cut through the wall below it with a bush saw, for the internal doorway. It felt sacrilegious to be doing this.
Dampening it first, wearing an old leather glove, I did rub down the new mud wall. It was easy, and made such a difference that I turned again to the adjoining original western wall. This looked even worse by comparison, and was a great embarrassment now I was writing for Owner Builder. People expected me to not only know what to do right, but to have done it. But I, me, grey-haired mature me, hadn’t done this; some young ignorant thing had, all that time ago. Yet it was clear I had to fix up her mistakes or I’d get no peace.
I tried hosing it down and rubbing, but it was old and stubborn and behaved like stone; the bumps needed rasping before they would merge into mud again and fill the dips. This was extremely hard on the arthritic wrists; I could only do a little patch a day, and some of the ruts were so deep that all I could do was blur them, but it looked much better.
Last Christmas, panicked by expected first-time visitors whom I feared would be justifiably critical, I also rubbed down the walls on the verandah, which was far easier work. Although not weather-damaged, their crannies had been expanded by wasps taking mud for their nests, crannies which would not have existed if I’d rubbed the walls in the first place. Mud is so forgiving.
Sometime, I will do the remaining east wall, and then paint them all with linseed oil and turps, which also should have been done in the first place. Maybe next autumn, when it’s cooler, and my wrists have recovered...
The bedrooms’ windows are still not sanded or sealed or re-puttied; we were keen t
o move in, and my partner assured me that he’d take them off one by one and finish them, later. ‘Later’ is a very stretchy word. Now I have them on my own running list of things to do sometime. Later.
At least since I’ve been on my own I’ve got round to hiding the silver foil backing of the addition’s roof insulation, after staring up at it for years, counting the tape ‘bandaids’ where the bush rats had got in once and made holes in the foil. Unable to afford lining boards, I bought cream hessian and tacked it up. It sags a bit and resembles a poor man’s seraglio, but it’s an improvement.
And I can see the spiders clearly against such a pale background, which is a comfort at night. In the warmer months, last thing before I turn out my reading light, I always look up; it’s surprising how often I spot a spider. No doubt if I hadn’t looked, it would have gone about its business and disappeared by morning. But once I know, I have to put it outside—what if it dropped onto my face!
When I was young, we used to scream for Dad, who’d splat spiders against the wall with the broom. Big hairy spiders make very large and fleshy splats. Ugh. Now I’m more civilised, and braver. Well, I have to be; there’s no one to scream for.
Before I tackle the job, I turn on all the lights, open the window in readiness, and have the torch handy in case the creature escapes into the shadows—I’d need to know where to. Standing on the bed to reach the low ‘ceiling’, I place a large glass over the spider, then slide a piece of card between the rim and the hessian, to make a lid. This is tricky because the hessian isn’t rigid. The reason why I must use clear glass and not a mug is so I can see, to be sure I’ve got it and that it’s not running up my sleeve instead. Then I can empty it out the window. Ugh. I’m shuddering now at the spider-up-the-sleeve thought.
My other good building deed in the bedroom was to put the missing timber stripping around the windows, so the wind no longer whistles through. It involved rather a lot of bent small nails, but it works.
I realise that, when I had a male partner, building was his province by natural right, as mine was the cooking and the gardening. All I could do was try not to nag as the years passed and the jobs remained unfinished under the endless time pressures of being self-employed. Alone, I was free to have a go.
And there’s always plenty to have a go at, in all different materials. Metal is foreign to me, probably because I have no experience of or tools for it, but wood, mud, rock and cement don’t scare me.
Take the cellar, which was the one benefit of the unlevel site. It keeps the home-brew cool, and there’s a trap door in the floor for fetching replenishments. However the bush rats had created a maze of tunnels between the rocks in the footings—into the cellar. Snakes hunt rats, and snakes like cool places. I’d twice seen a Red-bellied Black Snake escape into those holes. I couldn’t make myself go down there, despite my stocks having run dry. Late last autumn, with any snakes theoretically asleep somewhere else, I finally filled the holes with cement. As I had to crouch and crawl along under the verandah to do the front footings, it wasn’t pleasant, but the cellar is safely usable again.
I’m quite proud of myself when I can finally cross something like that off my list. I try to do at least some small thing in the yard or the house each day before I start writing and am hooked. Some days the ‘small thing’ takes half the day, since housekeeping here is really farm maintenance.
If I do something that wasn’t on a list, I’ll add it to one, just so I can cross it off and give my efforts due recognition. It’s a way of convincing myself that I’m being a practical manager even if I am a female with my head elsewhere most of the time.
Every now and then I get an urge to do something beautiful and unnecessary to the house, and I lurch into carrying out a ‘project’. Last winter I covered a high fixed window in the gable end with those iridescent flat-based glass pebbles sold in bargain shops. I glued them on with clear silicone into a vaguely Arabic cum Art Nouveau pattern, in cool colours, as it’s on the west.
Acknowledging this nest-decorating binge behaviour, I make sure I buy the materials for such small creative projects as soon as I can afford to after thinking of them, so as to have them here when the urge takes me. It’s a long way to a shop.
After the rear addition, I thought myself pretty posh. It was now practically a four-room house, if you counted the pantry squeezed in between the two hobbit-size bedrooms—hobbits also build into hills. Posh too, because I’d painted old and new interior mud walls with cream organic paint to seal them and to reflect more light.
When visitors arrive I usher them in the front door and turn them on the spot as I point out kitchen, dining, lounge, study, office. Five steps more and they’re in the bedrooms. They say it’s ‘compact’ and ‘cute’, ‘charming’ and ‘quaint’, and I agree, as, apart from running out of walls for bookshelves, it’s perfect for my needs.
The only room I’m really missing is a bathroom.
My ex-partner wasn’t keen on boiling billies for a hot shower after a hard day’s work. We replaced the old fuel stove with a reconditioned slow combustion one that came with a hot-water jacket. He put a tank on the roof and did the copper plumbing, taking the pipes out through the mud wall at the back of the stove. That being the most direct place to put a shower, he did. Four star posts and a strip of blue woven plastic as a windbreak, and a wooden packing pallet with rubber over it for a floor, and I had my first plumbed mountain bathroom.
It was also what first met visitors’ eyes when they drove up to my house gate. Other disadvantages, especially on a wet night, were that it had no roof, and to get to it I had to walk right round the outside of the house. Showering by a hung torch was a bit risky when other creatures might have taken up residence since my last shower—spiders, especially in the folds of the face cloth; frogs; lizards; snakes; and, once, an echidna that emerged from under the pallet while I was washing my hair. With shampoo in my eyes, I couldn’t quite see what it was and my scream terrified us both.
But plastic disintegrates. Bathroom model 2 was a three-hour job that lasted three years. My partner wired wood to the old star posts to extend the height. Sheets of rusty corrugated iron were screwed to these to form a roof and modesty panels, leaving it open above chest height for occupants to see out—and for the wind to take the shower spray far out of their reach. Visitors rhapsodised over the views and said we mustn’t ever change a thing—but they could afford to be enthusiastic, since they’d go home to a viewless but sealed, warm and steamy bathroom.
Bathroom model 3 is my current one. My then twenty-something son needed to convalesce here after an operation, a follow-up from an earlier motorbike accident. On crutches he’d have had trouble getting to the shower. So, in advance, he got hold of a fibreglass three-sided shower shell, free, from a renovation job, and built a timber frame for it at the eastern end of my verandah. The plumbing was re-routed, and a bamboo blind was hung for the ‘dressing room’, as a token divider between the open top, open front ‘bathroom’ and the rest of us sitting beside it on the verandah.
It is less than ideal, as it blocks my morning sun and that view from the verandah, as well as reducing the light in my kitchen area. There’s also a problem when a gusty westerly wind is blowing, as the shower curtain snatches a quick icy embrace—‘A-argh!’—in between the calm periods when the water actually feels hot. In winter I have very, very, very long showers, as I can’t bear to turn the hot water off, knowing that when I do, after a fraction of a second of residual steam, I must open the shower curtain and freeze, naked at 5 degrees.
Like all the other bathrooms, this one is only temporary. Only in its fifth year, in fact. Sometime, somehow ... oh, and a bath to lie down in, please. There are times when I’d trade a sunset for that!
The last building project here was begun the Easter after I’d gone solo. Two of my sisters agreed to help me build a little cabin as a permanent home for Dad. Below is a shorter version of a piece I wrote about this for Bonzer online seniors’ magazi
ne. It helped me put the experience in perspective, and so eased the pain...
Dad’s Place
No reason why we three women couldn’t do it, if I kept the plan and method simple. My sisters had no building experience, but we knew Dad wouldn’t care about rough edges and wonky lines. As he’d been a carpenter by trade, I thought it best not to use timber—might make the mistakes too obvious, even for an easy-going bloke like him. Considering fires, and what was handy, a stone cabin seemed best. Between us we’d manage the heavy work.
I’d chosen a spot by the Cootamundra Wattles, near some big rocks that would make perfect beer-o’clock sitting spots. My sisters arrived, and liked the site. We set to work. City-based Sister One looked so funny in my spare gumboots and old felt hat that I wished Dad was here to see. She was to pass materials to me, while Sister Four was assigned to mixing cement.
We levelled the site, and boxed in for the brick and concrete slab. Our arms were aching by the time we’d mixed and trowelled and smoothed, but satisfyingly so. Sister Four went to make tea for smoko while Sister One and I watered and covered the setting concrete.
Next day we started the walls, leaving enough of the slab exposed for an all-round verandah. He’d want that to enjoy the view. It was a small cabin, but we fitted in a window on the eastern wall, for morning sun, and the door was on the sunny north. The stones we used had come from Port Macquarie, where they’d retired from their second farm, a cattle property in Northern New South Wales.
Dad loved an open fire, but Mum had put always her foot down about the mess. We made a big chimney on the west; narrowing to a freestanding column, it was a challenge, but ended up only slightly askew.
On the last evening of their visit we drank to Dad as we admired our work, joking about what he’d think of it. He’d surely laugh at us girls as builders, especially Sister One—the one who hadn’t transplanted to the country, who never went anywhere without make-up, and for whom a broken nail was a disaster. But for him she’d got dirty without complaint.
