To some eyes, Queensland’s familiar timber and tin homes lent Brisbane, and other Queensland cities and towns, a particular temporary, insubstantial air. Known as 'A Queenslander’, they seemed so much less solid and permanent than houses built of brick or stone. Many Queensland houses were perched high in the air on tall stumps, as the supporting pillars were always known as, and seemed likely to simply fly away.
The Queensland house was relatively inexpensive when trees were plentiful, easy to move from place to place, and, in a relatively benign climate, single skin, unlined walls were all that were considered needed to protect dwellers~people~the dwellers within} from cold. Sturdy corrugated iron roofs stood up to heavy tropical rain and could be re-used if moved by cyclonic winds.
Verandahs sheltered people from the burning sun and also caught any breeze that might be passing during the steamy summers. Coverings outside window openings meant that windows didn’t have to be closed when humidity brought rain. Clever little revolving tin cylinders on the roofs removed hot air that had been drawn into ceiling spaces through decorative fretwork openings.
Although timber is not a particularly effective insulator against either heat or cold, air could flow along long central hallways in a typical Queensland house and across the house from an open window on one side through open doors to the open window on the other side. Some exteriors were painted, others were simply oiled. Some verandahs were decorated with elaborate and expensive iron lace; others made do with simple timber dowels and carved timber decoration in pediments over the front entrance.
Despite the impression of apparent impermanence, the Queensland house has survived since its first appearance in the mid-nineteenth century. However, it has evolved. The simple two-room or four-room cottage has given way to large, sprawling homes. The pattern of the Queenslander home can be translated into early types of kit-set houses.
Many were manufactured by companies in Brisbane and transported long distances as flat-packs on trains. Selections of verandahs, tongue and groove boards for walls and sheets of corrugated iron for roofs were available at the destination for assembling. The public housing movement that produced workers cottages adapted the basic materials to different shapes and sizes suitable for lower-cost housing.
After the war, the Queenslander seemed out of date in a world of modem architecture. Brick houses, American ranch style residences and other imported styles began to populate new suburbs. However, Brisbane is a hilly city and even modem designs often adapted the idea of stumps so that houses could be close to the ground near the top of a rising allotment and high where the ground angled away. In the late twentieth century, the old materials, tin and timber, were given new currency by innovative architects to create distinctly modem, light and airy Queensland homes.
In the 1970s and 1980s, when a drift back towards the inner suburbs attracted a new generation, old Queenslanders were discovered by younger owners. They painted them lovingly and added various renovations to bring an old favourite into the modem era.
However they originated, whether from sugar planters houses in the West Indies, bungalows in India or high houses in Malaysia, the Queenslander still distinguishes Brisbane from the other Australian capital cities.
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