This circa 1948 worker's cottage is set on a half acre of land five minutes drive south of the village of Franklin. Ten minutes' driving takes you to the economic hub of the Valley for shopping. Forty minutes' drive takes you to the state capital, Hobart. For schoolchildren, the school bus passes the beginning of the road on which the cottage is set, 180 metres away.
There are but three neighbours on this quiet, well-maintained gravel side-road. The closest, Chris (a retired project manager), lives opposite. A hundred metres further on is The Git's House of Steel that he shares with Mrs Git and The Gitling, now aged 19 and has been about to leave home for the city life all year. At the turnoff into the road there is Ivan (an orchardist) and his wife Lucy. Their house is adjacent to his nephew. Morph who has a young family.
The cottage itself could not be described as beautiful; rustic, or serviceable, perhaps, but it was built by amateurs after the day's work was complete and that frequently meant after dark. The exterior cladding is vertical, rough-sawn boards and the roof is unpainted zincalume that The Git used to replace the rusting galvanised iron some years ago. The roof has yet to show the slightest sign of deterioration. Mrs Git has been scraping the loose and flaking paint off the walls in preparation for a much needed repaint, though this won't be possible until the weather warms up again in the spring. The guttering on three sides of the roof will need replacing some time in the not very distant future. When we replaced the gutter on the western edge because it rusted out, we lacked the finances to replace the whole lot.
Water from the roof is collected in two 4,500 lite zincalume tanks for household use, there being no municipal water scheme. This is supplemented by another 4,500 litre tank adjacent to a large shed on our adjoining property. The contents of this tank have only been used in the droughtiest periods. Water for gardening (and the toilet if desired) is available from our large dam. It must be said that the dam water stained the original toilet an unpleasant brown due to its clay content. Much of the clay in the dam has since been flocculated out, so it's unknown whether the now much cleaner water would stain the "new" toilet.
The cottage consists of:
The wet areas at the rear of the house have painted concrete floors, the kitchen and sunroom have new sheet vinyl covering and the living and bedrooms fitted carpet. The floor coverings have yet to be completed at the time of writing (30 May, 2004). Anticipated completion is late June 2004). The living room walls are clad in varnished vertical pine boards and the rest of the interior walls are variously plasterboard, hardboard, waferweld, plywood and fibrous cement sheet. Note that this latter is cellulose, not asbestos fibre. Apart from the varnished pine, all walls and ceilings are freshly painted, mostly with high quality, Watyl scrubbable acrylic.
The kitchen is equipped with an Everhot combustion cook stove that supplies space heating and hot water, as well as cooking. The latter is supplemented by an electric stove. The kitchen is well-supplied with cupboards and shelves, and a double-bowl, stainless-steel sink set in a textured Laminex bench.
The antique, copper hot water cylinder has an electric element, though we never used it after we acquired the Everhot. Lighting a fire supplies hot water quicker and cheaper. It lives in the laundry with a laundry trough, a twin-tub washing machine and the toilet. Adjacent is the bathroom equipped with an enormous cast-iron bath. Access to this area is via the walk-in pantry.
The original half-inch copper and three quarter inch galvanised plumbing was all replaced by three quarter inch copper about fifteen years ago. The water is gravity fed, but this obviates the need for a header tank and pump. For those who want to be more profligate with water and feel an absolute need for a shower, it would be easy enough to fit a pump. Also at this time, about half of the electric wiring was replaced with the modern sort. The remainder will be replaced in the coming month. The electricity meter is the latest sort that is read remotely from the road.
The master bedroom has one wall devoted to two large built-in wardrobes with drawers below and cupboards above. The second of the large bedrooms has deep, built-in shelves.
The ceiling is insulated with glass wool batts and the weather side of the house is insulated, too. Uppermost in our minds when we first renovated the cottage was comfort and the recent renovations have been toward improving on that.
Outdoors, there is a large, rudely-built shed suitable for its intended purpose: storing firewood. While it would make sense to utilise the rainfall run-off from the shed roof for water storage, we never got a round twit. In twenty years, we purchased water just twice!
Sewage disposal is via a septic tank that needed to be pumped out for the second time in twenty years a couple of weeks before we moved into The House of Steel.
Here are some pictures:
View is from the east in early spring. The shrub is a snowball tree. The right hand window is the kitchen window, that to the left, the laundry. Since taking this picture, we have added a small window high up and to the left to bring more light into the bathroom.
Very occasionally, it snows. This picture was taken from the south-west in 1986. While there has been snow since, it hasn't settled as it did on this occasion. The chimney on the near side of the roof has since been removed replaced by a skylight to let more light into the rear, smaller bedroom. The enclosed attachment at the rear of the cottage was a carport, but it was too small, so we enclosed it as a sheltered area for garden tools etc. The windows are, left to right, the master bedroom, living area and small bedroom.
This is the view from the living area looking toward the entrance at the rear of the cottage. Beyond the diagonal pine door is a small hall with a bench where you can sit to change footwear, doff wet weather gear etc. The pantry, bathroom and laundry are off to the left and the smaller bedroom to the right.
This is the kitchen and a rather younger and very solemn Gitling. The Everhot combustion cook stove is to the right.
This shows the opposite side of the kitchen. This picture was taken before the renovations we conducted in the mid-to-late eighties were complete. The fluorescent lights under the shelves are now concealed by a panel.
While the Huon Valley is susceptible to autumn fogs, it's rare for us to awake to be surrounded by one, unlike the unfortunate denizens below. Usually, the fog rises around 10 am and clears within an hour. This is the view to the north from the land the cottage is on.
Even though this is a detail from the official survey map, it contains a couple of surprising errors. The main road from the highway is Braeside, not "Breaside". The watercourse running to the right of The House of Steel is less significant than one running to the left of the cottage which mysteriously was placed where The House of Steel is located 100 metres away. Both watercourses are intermittent, running only in wet weather. On older maps, the district is labelled South Franklin, though locally it has always been know as just "Braeside". The continuation of Braeside Road to the left branches to form a loop back to the highway, or you can forge on via a leech-infested bush track to Glen Huon.
Currently, there is no permanent fencing though the fencing materials are to hand. Our thoughts were that how it's fenced would vary according to the needs of the purchaser. Currently, most of the land is grazed by the neighbour's cattle. Also needed is some minor excavation to create better access to this area. There are two distinctly different ways to do this, so again, we have left this decision to the purchaser. It's our intention to use some of the money from the sale to hire Squid to complete the driveway to The House of Steel, so the cost of bringing him to the site would be nil. We have allocated the cost of renovating the cottage driveway at that time into the purchase price.
The soil is a fertile, heavy, silty clay. There is a number of large, moss-and lichen-covered stones in what is currently pasture that are crying out to be part of a decorative garden. There is ample water available for irrigation, should that be needed. Immediately adjacent to the cottage there are many trees and shrubs, as well as a variety of decorative perennial plants. It is many decades since the land saw any biocide used. The first frost is usually late April and the last frost late August.
It would be difficult to find a cheaper home that is within easy commuting distance of schools, shops, a capital city and wilderness that attracts tourists from around the world. We spent twenty odd years living in it and found the cottage's quirks tolerable in return for the manifest benefits of living here: clean air, wonderful neighbours, a crime-rate unmeasurably close to zero, wonderful scenery, a climate that gets rarely too hot, or too cold and mostly reasonable rainfall.
This is a vendor sale. No loathsome real estate agents that they put you in jail for killing, or make you vomit when you are forced to listen to them! We want only ~$AU100,000 (~$US70,000) for this cottage on half an acre. For further details, telephone +61 3 6266 3461 (03 6266 3461 in Australia) between 9am and 8pm, or email us: