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Welcome to our blog, Menfranco general blog
and this post, Australian housing in the sixties
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When we were building new houses, first of all we had to set up the profiles, and then we would start digging the foundations, for stumps or walls, it was hard work, but we were happy to do it anyhow.
There were lots of times, when the timber stumps under houses like this were rotting away, so we would go there, prop up the house were the stumps needed to be changed, and we would dig the old rotten stump out and replace them with new concrete stumps.
Australia housing in the sixties
Building work
When I came to Australia I ended up working in the building industry, we
were mainly working on houses, we were fixing old houses, or building new house
from scratch and also units and warehouses, so I ended up learning how lots of
building things were done, in the end I specialized in becoming a bricklayer,
and have worked most of my life as a bricklayer.
As most of us already know the Australian housing and building industry
is one of the major employment industries in Australia, you might say that this
is so also in other countries; but in other countries building houses is not as
important as it is in Australia. One of the reasons for this is that Australia
takes in many new emigrant, and also there are not many old building that could
be used to accommodate the new comers, so it is only natural that because the
population grows also accommodation need to grow, therefore a lot of new houses
need to be built, this building of new housing accommodations gives many
opportunities for the new comers to be employed, since there is a lot of manual
work involved, and therefore a healthy cycle is thus created; but even with
these opportunities the building industry has its ups and down, as we all know.
The housing building industry and real estate are more or less linked
together and both have their ups and downs; you see, it could have been helpful
if one could foretell what is going to happen next year, but it is not always
possible to guess what is going to happen in the future. If people could know
this, then they could be able to save money, especially if they are going to
buy a house. It would be also helpful for the investors, as they would be able
to invest their money at the right opportunity; about buying a house and saving
to buy a house, we are going to write later on, because now I would like to
continue my own story about house building, since that is what I was going to
do in the first place; anyhow it is worth to keep informed in these money
matters.
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Working in the housing building industry
As I
have said in one of my last hubs called: Is Australia the land of
opportunities; when I came to Australia from my native town;Genzano
di Lucania Italy I
ended up working in the building industry. Working on building in Australia is
usually a temporary job, because even the employer is subject to the same
opportunities of work, therefore one is never sure what is going to happen next
when one job is finished, and therefore there were always concerns about our
employment status, so, sometimes we could not help to continually ask
ourselves, whether our employer would be able to get another job to do in time,
before we finished the one we were doing.
Well I
have to say here that although this small Italian builder did lots of small
jobs, it did work out all right most times and we were able to move from one
job to another all around Brisbane town and also to some other close by town/s.
Of course this would cause some worries if you had no transport of your own and
you had to rely on some friends or the employer to take you on the work site,
where the building was going to be built, but we managed somehow.
I
remember that there were times when I had to get up early and catch the first
tram to the city, and then I had to catch the second tram to another suburb,
where usually the builder would pick me up and drive me to the onsite job, in
the evening after eight hours or more of hard work, I had to go back home,
which took again a long time, but anyhow we managed all right, after all we
were here in Australia to earn money and as long as we had a job to go to and
earn that money we were happy to do that. You see, on building sites workers
can earn a bit above other people wages, but there was this uncertainty because
there was no guaranty that the work would last and it also was hard work all
day long.
Anyhow
I think that it was a good job with good opportunities to learn and improve
your knowledge of building something yourself. You see in those times one could
improve their working and earning position more easily than today, as a lot of
people did, it was possible then because a lot of things were simple, and
therefore they could be done just by using your common sense. Of course there
were always inspections from local authorities to follow, but once you knew
what it was required they were easy to follow, therefore in a way I have to say
that we had more opportunities then compared to today opportunities.
As we
have said in those times things were simpler to work out, all you to do was to
use just common know how, earn money and save some of it for the future; we
will say a bit more about saving money in our next post, see you then.
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Menfranco general blog
Australia housing in the sixties
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Earning and saving money
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