And it's not grand (nor ever has been) by anyone's standards
no ours is a very simple little house....
It's a strange cobbled together conglomeration - it started as a small 2 room house... here is the original twin chimney... and weather boards (unpainted - still! and deliberately, defiantly so). A few years later the family added an old schoolhouse - dragged up from the other side of the creek.. so the layout was a sort of 'L' - with an early (if unintended) 'split level'
In the 1920s the family decided to 'update' and decorate the oldest part of the house with some lovely pressed metal wall covering...
It's still the lining of what now constitutes our library /guest room (guests?) and kids play area - which is complete with its own.....
Caledonia Combat wood stove... a funny story about this - the stove is not an original feature - I found this under a store up town in Cobargo in the late 1980s - the owners said 'please take it away!' I did, and it was my main stove for a period before I installed an electric model.... ahhhhhh the roasts this baby could turn out.... but it reminds me how much work it is to keep a wood stove running - see the little grills and doors on the left? That's where the wood had to go - it's small - and so the wood had to be chipped into small bits (have you ever split wood? and then chipped it into little bits?... in the rain?...) It had a rapacious appetite for wood chips...
I still have fond memories however - the food is something to behold when cooked in a wood stove - I'd love to get the iron (now burnt out) replaced and fire up the old dear again.....
Speaking of getting things up and going again - I'm known in the family as the person who just WILL NOT see reason (not if knocking down an old building is on the cards....) Years ago I saved the top of the oldest shed on the farm - I stood in front of the bulldozer - a one woman protest (my brother was driving the bulldozer...) - now I ask you - would you bulldoze this beauty? no I didn't think so - look at those hand hewn slabs - and you should see the rafters - all round timbers!... It's now safely resting on new heavy timber uprights (one day I'll turn this into something I just know I will....)
And the old house?
Well 7-ish years ago (after living here for more than 14 years) I finally got around to 'fixing' it.... (amazing what a pregnancy does to your perception of 'safe environs for the raising of littlens')
It's now a 'U' structure - with the oldest parts remaining (weird, different roof-lines and all) repiered, re-roofed, rejuvenated... and another (new) section added to bring the old dear back to what I figure is it's rightful simple self......
a humble country home by the creek
