A Chip Off the old Block

Like many houses in north Queensland, my house is made of block--cement block. It makes them very safe in a cyclone, but very hard to decorate.

Although I've lived in this house since December of last year, I've just recently gotten around to putting anything up on the walls. Needless to say, a picture nail hammered in to solid concrete will not get very far. But I've discoved, that a small nail, discretely placed in the mortar between the blocks is usually strong enough to hold up most items.

There are a couple of other houses on my block that are made of the same building materials. A house across the street is built of very nice red brick. Recently when I got home from work I noticed a work truck outside the house, and a worker was slathering what looked like stucco all over the bricks. When I asked what they were doing, I learned it's called "rendering" the brick. These sorts of houses are considered old-fashioned, and they are rendered to bring up their resale value. He was astonished when I told him that brick houses are so popular in the U.S. that fake fronts made out of tiles which look like brick are constructed. Here, brick is out-of-date, kind of like green shag carpet.

In this picture of my kitchen, you can see a few things that are indicative of north Queensland. The first is the block of course, but secondly is the stove. Although there's not much of it showing in the picture, you can see that it's very skinny. This is the usual size for a range, although it's a bit on the smallish end. The oven in the last flat I rented was even skinnier, and I had to turn cookie sheets on the diagonal to fit them in the oven.