The shack at Buller Street, Kingscote

Mention has been made several times of our Kangaroo Island home, so here is a little more detail of how it came about.

By early 1953 we had finished building 14 soldier settlement sheds at Parndarna, and the Buller Street block had been bought with the proceeds, as well as most of a Nissen hut that had been dismantled and retrieved from the Wedge Island WW2 Army base. I was still crushing odd orders of stone, and the unsaleable fines from this operation, I trucked into the block and built the top side slope up level for a building base. I also stockpiled crushed stone for concrete, and in my spare time I built a concrete mixer and two 6-block moulds which were laid out on to a flat sanded area, then filled with solid concrete. About a half hour later the moulds were wriggled and removed and cleaned, then reused – a continuous production line producing blocks of approximately 450 x 225 x 110cm. It was really hard work laying these blocks as they were extremely heavy.
Cement was collected from the local wharf storage sheds, where the rough handling of the stevedores, saw dozens of cement bags split out of every 24 that went to make up the 'ton'. The inflated price of a bag of cement at the local store reflected these ongoing losses! I had regular phone calls from the wharf manager to come and remove damaged bags, which I bought for a token payment, on the assurance that I swept up the loose cement and left the place tidy. This arrangement continued for many years, until I no longer needed concrete about the place!

The Nissen hut was erected, without ends which it lacked, and the approximate 12 x 5 metre floor area was concreted in sections as time and energy permitted. Glenda had now been born, and Grandmother Jeffery had departed our temporary bag hut dwelling next to the Kingscote oval, on yet another trip back to the mainland, and so our caravan was moved over to the Buller Street block. The immediate need was for a kitchen and soon a 4 x 4 metre solid block structure was built with a door and window. An almost as new wood stove had been found, plus an old lounge and some chairs and a kitchen table. Kitchen cupboards and a sink, as well as a rainwater tank were soon in place. Barbara's brother Warren visited us at this point, and as he was proficient in the plastering trade, the internal walls were soon smooth and white, and we moved the caravan close to the kitchen.

Shelley was now on the way, and the need for a laundry and bathroom, saw more blocks rising in a 4 x 3 metre section alongside the kitchen. This was hardly finished and Shelley had arrived, and now we had two small children sleeping in cots that had been built into the no longer used cooking section of the caravan. By now I had become adept at building a 'true' wall and learned how to apply cement plaster. The whole place was beginning to look quite professional – however not a single thought had ever been given to applying for any sort of building permit, and eventually the local council tried to extract their presumed fee from me. I was one of dozens of people who had proceeded with the usual disregard for local government processes – which had never been enforced in any way anyhow – and I never did get a permit! It couldn't happen there now, I am sure!
Shortly afterwards, it was decided that we needed a place for the growing children to play. So a sunroom was built along side of the caravan, as an extension of the kitchen, the rear door of the building thus migrated to the sunroom, with a new connecting opening being cut through to the kitchen with a sliding door.

The sun room had louvre windows across the Northern side, and part of the Eastern. Storage and sewing cupboards went right across the northern exposure, and Barbara had a new sewing machine, which soon produced colourful curtains all around! The laundry also had much needed cupboard space built in against the kitchen – but no sooner had all this been completed – and another child was on the way! This of course turned out to be Bill, and so a bed appeared in the sunroom for Glenda, who now slept alone.

Time passed and, before we knew it, Wendy had appeared! So a set of bunk beds appeared in the sunroom and Glenda had company. There was much switching of bed positions before all had settled down again, Billy being finally forced into the single bed where he was less prone to cause disturbances! At this point we made the decision to vacate the caravan altogether, and so it was taken away from under the overall roofed in area, and it's place was taken by a proper main bedroom the same size and construction as the sunroom. This completed the shack building as it still is to this day, but Barb wasn't finished yet, and the eminent arrival of Dean saw me searching for more bed space. As my workshop area was completely inadequate for my needs, a major building project was commenced. This involved the building of a complete new full width extension onto the workshop facade. This was done with the now locally manufactured cement bricks, all the construction done by myself. It included a full width truss across the building, which carried a much needed crane rail, a large home made lift-up main door, and later a generous double carport on the Northern side.
A small office was part of the structure, the area above it used for storage. This extra workshop area was more than enough for my needs, and as had been planned, part of it was robbed for another small bedroom opening off the bathroom. This involved cutting a door through my cement block laundry wall and a bit or re-routed plumbing, but soon Glenda and Shelley were installed in their own small, though rather gloomy bedroom, as I had no intention of cutting a window into the cement brick side wall which would have opened into the carport area in any case!

So it still stands today! The old original Nissin hut is still part of the structure I guess, although I should think that by now it's wartime curved ungalvanised corrugated sheeting may have been replaced – maybe by an overall roof. I applied numerous coats of a silvered tar mixture to the roof area over the years, and amazingly it never leaked water in our time there.

Early on we only had the time honoured hole in the ground toilet on the back of the block. This was moved sideways to a new hole now and then, usually with our motorcycle mates helping with the operation, as they considered that the large amount of time that they spent at my workshop, with the use of the family toilet, gave them a certain amount of responsibility in the matter. One of them actually bought the block next to us, and he and his new (pregnant) wife continued to use our toilet while they lived in a tent. He finally completed the building of his home but it was still quite some time before he got around to building a proper outside toilet, so all his visiting family and friends used to climb the intervening boundary fence, and wear a path to our toilet!
I tried various methods of combating this practice. I place a barbed wire strand on top of the fence, and soon a pad of wheat sacks covered the barbs, even the women still negotiated this deterrent with ease! My next move was to extend our chicken run up the fence line, so that now they had to negotiate two fences, and cross the chicken run – this still didn't deter them! Our final defence was to keep an eye out for the desperate intruders, and every time we spotted a woman cross the chicken run, Barbara would alert me, and I would go and open the loo door just as the women became settled! Eventually they finally took the hint and built their own toilet! I then set to work and installed a proper septic tank system.

The garden part of our living area was raised up to the level by dozens of trips down to the local coast where there was rich sandy loam for the taking. I accomplished this by using our old Chevy – removing the rear seat assembly, and shoveling tons of soil into the body through the open door and rear luggage boot opening. At a later date the car was sold to a local earthmoving contractor, and the new owner gave me the job of removing the rear of the body above the mudguards, and building a tray body in it's place, with a floor hatch to gain access to the original body storage space below it. I have no idea how many years it soldiered on in this guise – motor vehicles on Kangaroo Island were driven right into the ground, many being used for years as farm hacks with a lot of them being used by children of the families to drive the sometimes considerable distance to their front gate each day to pick up their school bus.

By January 1961 when we left the Island, Barbara had fruit trees growing in the garden and a large vegetable patch as well as the inevitable flowers. I had built a brush fence down one side of the kitchen lawn area, and the children had a large well equipped playhouse next to Barbara's small bird aviary. We also had a female goat to supply milk for Billy's ongoing eczema skin problem, and we almost had a real home, and it was terribly hard to pack up and leave for the wilds of Melbourne. To this day a proper house has never graced the front of the Buller Street block, even though at one point just prior to our leaving, the plans were all approved, and the building bricks stacked on the block!