Building Australia

From the inner city we move to consider how Australians have adapted to a climate with which most were initially unfamiliar. Archive journals reveal how unprepared the pioneers were for the tropics. So, from a suburban Brisbane residence to a Bundaberg sugar plantation and from a Rockhampton railway house to a literally itinerant dwelling in Longreach, this episode explores the gradual adaptation to life in the tropics and the evolution of one of Australia's most iconic houses. We survey the conflicting reasons given for raising the house above the ground - was it air circulation, flood mitigation or simply expediency? We cover the depredations of the white ant and the various solutions that were thrown at that ongoing problem. Finally we move to the Top End, to examine the introduction of an Asian influence on Australian housing, one that has survived the bombings of the Second World War, the devastation of Cyclone Tracey and the assaults of property developers. The series will explore how Australia has shaped the Australian house - and in turn, how the Australian house has shaped the lives and cultures of Australians. Throughout the series, John Doyle will chart the journey of the Australian house so far, through observations and conversations with a range of experts, enthusiasts and home owners around the country.

This episode investigates the style of probably the most romantic form of Australian house. As we learn from Palladian Camden Park the initial impulse was to build "country homes" that replicated the fashions and the assertions of a class system that were derived from England. But, as we see at Lanyon Homestead, it was not long before the design principles of the Australian homestead started to emerge. The homestead is unique among Australian houses as it is inextricably tied to the work place. Central to a working property it is, traditionally, something that is expected to pass through the generations. Camden Park is still in the hands of the descendants of those who commissioned it in 1831. Woolmers, in Tasmania, has a similarly long association with its founding family and is a rich repository of stories about how houses were built, staffed and managed with assigned convict labour. From a contrasting homestead in north Queensland, which gives us an insight into how a forward-looking family brought their house, and the farm, with them into the Twentieth Century, we go to our last stop which brings us to perhaps the most iconic image of a homestead. Located in the isolated Western Australian wheat belt this homestead remains just as remote today and tells us the story of pioneering in harsh conditions and making a home that had to offer hospitality to travellers as well as family. The series will explore how Australia has shaped the Australian house - and in turn, how the Australian house has shaped the lives and cultures of Australians. Throughout the series, John Doyle will chart the journey of the Australian house so far, through observations and conversations with a range of experts, enthusiasts and home owners around the country.

Up until now, the houses we've looked at were all meant as permanent residences. But, as the Labour Movement agitated for fair working conditions, including paid holidays and the five day week, leisure was on people's minds. This episode tells the story of what many did with their leisure - they built and, when they could, retreated to weekenders. From the tradition of bush carpentry seen in Brayshaw's Hut (a turn of the century grazier's lodgings in the alpine area of Namadgi National Park), we see the weekender's make-do origins and its development as weekenders were established to service the alpine leisure pursuits that later caught on around mount Kosciuszko. There is, of course, fibro on the beach and kit homes made from recycled materials but the weekender is also the story of "the shack on wheels", as better cars and better roads saw the rise of caravanning in Australia. As times got tougher and building regulations got stricter, the golden age of the shack passed, but for many the indelible memories of time spent in the weekend getaway are as formative as any other memories of "home". The series will explore how Australia has shaped the Australian house - and in turn, how the Australian house has shaped the lives and cultures of Australians. Throughout the series, John Doyle will chart the journey of the Australian house so far, through observations and conversations with a range of experts, enthusiasts and home owners around the country.

Beginning with the Father of Federation, and Australia's second prime minister Alfred Deakin's Federation Bungalow Ballara, this episode tells the story of the optimism and confidence that powered the movement to make Australia an independent nation. This national idealism was reflected in the assured, even showy architecture of the Federation house. While the Federation style created its own genres, such as arts and crafts, Queen Anne and Spanish Mission, it also coloured the landscape of urban Australia as it spread, with affluence and the growth of population, into the suburbs. Once reserved for the wealthy wishing to escape the bustle of the city (as represented in the ostentatious Chadwick House in Victoria's Eaglemont) the suburbs were opening up to the working class. In Australia's first planned suburb, Dacey Gardens in New South Wales, we visit the modest Federation Californian Bungalows built to house returning servicemen after World War I. Here Federation can be seen as a style that took from different movements around the world and turned them into something unique and uniquely Australian. The series will explore how Australia has shaped the Australian house - and in turn, how the Australian house has shaped the lives and cultures of Australians. Throughout the series, John Doyle will chart the journey of the Australian house so far, through observations and conversations with a range of experts, enthusiasts and home owners around the country.

While houses from the recently decommissioned airforce base in Tocumwal, New South Wales, delivered via truck to Canberra went some way toward addressing the housing crisis in our nation's capital, with post war immigration and the baby boom the rest of Australia needed some 400,000 new homes. This episode tells the story of how factory built houses and project homes met this intense demand for housing and, to a degree, reflected both the taste for 'modernity' and the preferences of the 'New Australians' who moved into the spreading suburbs. From the once revolutionary display village of 'Kingsdene Estate' in Carlingford, from Ken Woolley's Lowlines to Nino Sydney's Beachcombers (himself a post-war immigrant) this is the story of how Australia managed to house us all. It is the story of the 25 most formative years that shaped the Australia we live in today. The job of building Australia is, of course, ongoing but in six episodes John Doyle has charted the journey so far. His perspective has privileged the building that matters most to all of us - the home. His observations and his conversations with a range of experts, enthusiasts and homeowners around the country have offered insight and commentary on how, in building the Australian house, we have both created and been created by a unique set of values, priorities and solutions. The series will explore how Australia has shaped the Australian house - and in turn, how the Australian house has shaped the lives and cultures of Australians. Throughout the series, John Doyle will chart the journey of the Australian house so far, through observations and conversations with a range of experts, enthusiasts and home owners around the country.