After the Mudslide MUD Brick

Sunday Age Index: 1.1 Sunday 20/1/2008 Brief: RNILL Page: 1 Page 1 of 5 Section: Domain Sunday Region: Melbourne Circulation: 225,000 Type: Capital City Daily Size: 1,837.90 sq.cms. Published: ------S

Findingnewfavour after the mudslide MUD brick. That oldest, deemed by the FirstRate five-star creatives attracted to the area to cheapest, easiest and mostenergy program as having such raise "one-off, whimsical, character- sustainable building poor-to -negligible energy efficiencyrich houses". material literally put that few if any mud-brick houses Mud brick is a material that Eltham and its surrounds have been built in Nillumbik or any"doesn't require precision workman- on the map in the 1930s as artists other part of the state since. ship", says Mr Henry. "Even and back-to-nature types flocked to It is an outcome that doesn't sit grandma can lay mud bricks." Melbourne's bushy north-east, well with architect Ross Henry. In And while the associated tech- drawn by its creative and eco- his 30-year career, Mr Henry has nology of a modern alternative, pise friendly potential. designed well over 100 muddies in (or rammed earth), has gotten But three years ago, the humble the rural shire. He deeply regrets thearound the rating system to some muddy fell foul of Victoria's new demise of a "hand-built housing" housing energy rating system. In a tradition that had once allowed ama- decision steeped in irony, it was teurs and a high percentage of the

Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) licensed copy Ref: 32594955 Sunday Age Index: 1.1 Sunday 20/1/2008 Brief: RNILL Page: 1 Page 2 of 5 Section: Domain Sunday Region: Melbourne Circulation: 225,000 Type: Capital City Daily Size: 1,837.90 sq.cms. Published: ------S

Mud brick is off the boil in Victoria because of its low eriergrating here, but its champions are fighting backi writesJenny Brown.

Cool, rustic, very original, this Ross Henry-designed mud-brick house has withstood the seasons. PICTURE: TOM McCALLUM

Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) licensed copy Ref: 32594955 Sunday Age Index: 1.1 Sunday 20/1/2008 Brief: RNILL Page: 1 Page 3 of 5 Section: Domain Sunday Region: Melbourne Circulation: 225,000 Type: Capital City Daily Size: 1,837.90 sq.cms. Published: ------S

sales brochures whenever one of his comes onto the market. Today, depending on land sizes or aspects relative to the main town- ships, mud-brick houses with a provenance can sell for a premium, says Morrison Kleeman Eltham agent Gayle Blackwood. "The name, the aura or the famous work of an artist can help because the properties have a story that adds to their attraction," she says. Michael Skewes These include Knox, says he's very Robert Marshall, happy with the Llewellyn Pritchard, energy Ross Henry or any of efficiency of his the artists who came Kangaroo to the area. Ground muddy. The attraction of mud-brick houses is degree by including insulation in the certainly there. "We core of relatively porous walls, pise is have more people a job for professionals, says Mr coming out to Henry. "It's a contractor's role so the Eltham to look for them than we handmade aspect has gone out of have on our books because mud- it." He says pise is a fine material but brick houses are not your standard "it just doesn't have the beauty of brick veneers," Ms Blackwood says. mud brick". She says some of her buyers have Idiosyncratic and sometimes swapped swank Docklands apart- amazing, mud brick and recycled ments for muddies with land on stone houses - often built by which they can build a studio. There owner-builders of limited budgets are also first-home buyers who gain but unlimited imagination - have entry-level access in a suburban been the architectural vernacular of Eltham muddy for $430,000 or for the semi-rural areas around Eltham marginally less in entry-level Hurst- since the 1930s, when the template bridge. was established at the artists' colony On the bigger properties, which of Montsalvat by Justus Jorgensen are viable for hobby farm agriculture and his friends. in Kangaroo Ground and St From the 1950s, builder/designer Andrews, the prices touch million- Alistair Knox championed the dollar-plus levels. material along with the use of recy- In the unique Environmental cled timbers and stone as part of Living Zone precinct on the Yarra what he called an "alternate Austra- known as the Bend of Isles, Ms lian vernacular". Blackwood has for sale a four- Described as "the father of the bedroom mud-brick house with earth-building movement", Knox is hectares of land for just under said to have designed more than 600 $700,000. The proviso of settling in mud-brick houses around the dis- the zone, which was largely the trict and his name still headlines brainchild of painter and potter Neil Douglas, is that residents cannot "Even grandma can lay have dogs, cats, fences, firearms or any extraneous land clearing or mud bricks." development that might impact ROSS HENRY, architect detrimentally on the native flora and fauna. It is therefore one of the enclaves that has attracted a disproportionate number of creatives who prefer the quiet of the bush to the more

Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) licensed copy Ref: 32594955 Sunday Age Index: 1.1 Sunday 20/1/2008 Brief: RNILL Page: 1 Page 4 of 5 Section: Domain Sunday Region: Melbourne Circulation: 225,000 Type: Capital City Daily Size: 1,837.90 sq.cms. Published: ------S

immediate stimulus of the high and retreats in what is now known as Despite the fact that some of the streets of suburbia. The Baldessin Press. rooms had been built by a mud They are the people who live in "It's high maintenance," she brickie "who didn't believe in using the core of the area dubbed by real says, "but I have no intention of a spirit level", says Mr Skewes, "it estate agents as "Eltham and Dis- leaving again." had the `wow' factor. I loved it as trict". Since the 1970s, especially, so Inspired by Clifton Pugh's art soon as I walked in." The Skewes many painters, potters, writers, compound, Dunmoochin, ceramic have changed very little about the musicians, architects, jewellers and artist Judy Trembath and her sculp- house they well recognise as part of craftspeople have settled there that tor husband Tony simi- Nillumbik's heritage and say all it the district has turned into an arts larly took up cheap really needs, perhaps, "is a dish- hub. land in nearby Cottles washer". When it comes to building Bridge in 1971. The recycled building "For us, it's just fine as it is." Having spent a decade living in houses and studios, they very materials lying in piles mud brick, Mr Skewes finds nothing famously do their own thing and on their hillside block to fault in its energy performance. their housing compounds are almost show they are still in always unique and, invariably, micro the process of realising "On the second or third day of a five- day heatwave, sure, it will heat up. village-like collections of buildings their vision of house, surrounded by vaguely tanle d bush. home studios, a fanci- But it also cools down." He is just one of many in the area Gayle Blackwood says that for the ful corrugated tower artists of Nillumbik, "environmental apartment used by who feel it is a terrible shame "that sensitivity goes hand in hand with the mud-brick industry has gone off their 27-year-old son the boil because it is so much a part creativity". and sheds. In 1970, when Tess Edwards was They started their of the heritage here". the young wife of nationally famous compound with a hexagonal tower printmaker George Baldessin, the on which they learned how to make couple faced a choice of buying an and lay mud bricks. Mud brick was Albert Park terrace house for $12,000 their option, says Ms Trembath, or a fibro shack on 4.5 hectares up a "because we couldn't get a bank dirt track behind St Andrews for loan and because we could make $7750. them ourselves". They opted for the bush and in Though she now has the perfect the eight years until her husband pottery and teaching workshop with died in a car accident, they built a bush and distant valley outlooks, the cottage, studio and the bones of a place keeps growing as new ideas big house out of recycled bluestone. occur to the sculptor and as new As a European, George insisted on needs for their practices arise. stone buildings and, at the time, A shed is soon due to become a nobody wanted the bluestones from showroom for Ms Trembath's cer- demolished city buildings. amics but even if they were allowed "We got them for the price of the to build in mud brick, they probably transport," Ms Edwards says. wouldn't make the raw product Though Ms Edwards "ran away" themselves "because making mud Artist Judy to France for nearly 20 years, she brick is very, very hard work". Trembath's never sold her house and eventually family house at felt the call to return to it to honour That the Trembaths have never built to suit a market but rather in a Cottles Bridge Baldessin's memory and finish the has been a work vision he had for the place as an place that they love is characteristic of the alternative building vernacular in progress for access studio and artists' retreat. nearly 30 years. With new partner, artist Lloyd of Elthani and District. Godman, and other professional Some of the most individualistic printmakers, she runs workshops houses present a challenge to con- ventional buyers. But if mud-brick compounds do come on the market, "0n the second or third Ms Blackwood says they are often targeted by other artists from within day of a five-day the area and, increasingly, by over- heatwave, sure, it will seas buyers looking for a definitive Australian bush lifestyle experience. heat up. But it also Potter Michael Skewes and his wife, Annie, had always dreamed of cools down." MICHAEL SKEWES living in a mud-brick house in the bush. In 1996, they bought wild hectares in the Environmental Living Zone and the mud-brick house built by Neil Douglas and Abbie Heath- cote. The house's provenance was "a bonus", says Mr Skewes.

Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) licensed copy Ref: 32594955 Sunday Age Index: 1.1 Sunday 20/1/2008 Brief: RNILL Page: 1 Page 5 of 5 Section: Domain Sunday Region: Melbourne Circulation: 225,000 Type: Capital City Daily Size: 1,837.90 sq.cms. Published: ------S

Mud-brick advocate Michael Young is working to have the humble "muddy" restored to favour. PICTURE: MICHELE FERGUS01 Restoring a master material, brick by brick

BUILDER Michael Young was once appren- the mud-brick house building industry the most environmentally friendly of all ticed to Alistair Knox and has con- can start up again. building materials, and that not everyone structed numerous mud-brick houses. So He claims the virtual ban on using mud in Australia wants to live at 21 degrees, it's natural that the 49-year-old builder brick comes down to glitches in the soft- seven days a week". finds it frustrating that, in the past three ware, rather than the material itself, Mr Young says the software determin- years, he has only been allowed to build which "in a house made out of 250mm ing the five-star criteria is already up to two small extensions out of a material bricks works so beautifully that it can version five and there is hope that, with a that he feels "has proven itself to be eco- have less thermal fluctuation than a few more tweaks, it might finally friendly for 10,000 years". normal house". measure the right reasons for building in As president of the Nillumbik Mud Brick "With good design we can get a five- mud brick. Association and a local councillor, Mr star rating or better." The breakthrough is inevitable, he Young has been lobbying hard to have While the NSW mud-brick building scene believes. When it happens, he says, "Nil- the software that rates a building's has been thriving under different energy lumbik, the heartland of mud-brick build- energy performance recalibrated to con- measurements, he says his association ing in Australia", can re-emerge from its sider the embodied energy of mud-brick has been forced to "battle on" through a temporary retreat as a showcase "of a manufacture - and its actual thermal succession of Victorian planning minis- fantastic heritage that uses a fantastic performance - more realistically so that ters with the argument that "mud brick is material".