Resourcing the far flung was RE: [LINK] fibre distance issues?

[Nicholas English]

 Hi 2 bob from above the tropic :-)

Once upon a time in galaxy far far away .... Traditionally (oh and in terms of today's "Emergency") housing projects were tied funding administered by State/Territory agencies. Traditionally the remote = high administration allowed the NT government to build & populate the northern suburbs of Darwin on the basis of 50% plus administration costs from housing/health/education tied grants - the Territory is 100% potential the rest is real :-)

Maintaining Canberra as sugar daddy to "increase the NTs potential (sic)" ensured that housing costs continued to be elevated to geosynchronous  orbit allowing for future planning, maintenance of a pool big enough for a number of 'specialist' contractors to be sustained as well as the corresponding number of well paid adminstrival support structures.

There are issues that do come with Territory. Tropical soil types tend to lack good building clays. I don't whether it is an issue but I wonder if strawbale construction might be just the first stage actually using termite mounds as a structural element. The trick might be to convince the termites not take the straw away but to consume insitu. Classically they were pulverised, wet and used as a floor that worked really well but smelt a lot when they got wet.

Roads!! They're everywhere, like telephones ahh but what kind of road? Certainly not the sort all weather road that might complete with the costal barge services or god forbid mean that freight might not have to come to Darwin for on shipping but could driven straight through to Wadye/Manningrida/Gove ....

Culture can have it's nuisances. The specifications for internals walls on a number of Health Centres built in some communities required shot gun blast resistance - but strawbale and adobe would have met that I guess.

My home (Darwin) was constructed in 1970 (yes that is preTracey) with bricks made in Maningrida (370km + travelling as crow or two cartons in the old mileage). Recently (ABC RN late last week) there were complaints from Roper River that all the "emergency" housing contracts had be let as a lump so local tradesmen (what qualified indigenous tradesmen??!!!) were unable to do any of the work.

The revolving door of experts/ well intentioned but without a roof for the wet season ( I wont define "wet" for the drought struck) is all part what makes this part of the world a great place to meet new people ?-)

...
Very few of the vectors in the history of remote Australia's 'development' have altered very much in this or 'emergencies' to come. There a real issues and many valid interests and the discussions amongst Link help bolster what we can only hope will become leadership based on sound analysis.

Cheers
sNic


-----Original Message-----
From: link-bounces at anumail0.anu.edu.au [mailto:link-bounces at anumail0.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Craig Sanders
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 7:43 AM
To: link at anu.edu.au
e.g. every time i see video on TV about remote communities, i look at the houses and wonder why they're such dreadful brick and fibro shacks
- it would be cheaper and better to build strawbale houses. excellent insulation, cheap building materials, cheap house design (basically a post-and-beam structure with rendered strawbale wall infill), and an abundance of dirt for a mud-render.

transporting strawbales might be expensive, but not when compared to transporting bricks or other mainstream construction materials.

with sufficient water, mud-brick houses are an option too.

another advantage is that the "plasticity" of the mud-render would allow the occupants to make each house a work of art, the mud can be manipulated into any shapes or patterns before it dries - encouraging emotional investment in the housing and reducing vandalism (people vandalise what is ugly, what they don't value)

and repairing damage is just slapping on another coat of render. easily done by unskilled labour - probably the occupants themselves.

IMO, a lot of good could be done by sending teams of experienced strawbale and mudbrick builders up there to run workshops teaching the communities how to build their own cool, efficient (eg simple stuff like passive solar design, north-facing, wide eaves/verandahs, etc) houses using local materials.

of course, housing and overcrowding aren't the only problems in remote communities - not by a long shot - but they are significant.

craig

--
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

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