It has been a decade or so since we moved here to our humpy on a bush block. We moved from an old Queenslander style house on an organic avocado orchard to a bare block with a caravan and a half built shed. The plan was to live in the shed for five years then build a house.

This was our home when we first moved down to our block. It was crowded and messy and we lived mainly outside.

The photos above are the only ones we have of the construction of the humpy. It shows the frame starting to come together and my youngest daughter at the age of about ten (she’s now on her way to twenty two).

Well, five turned into ten years in the blink of an eye. The house plans changed often and the kids grew up. Now we are about to start on our house in truth. There will be several phases to our build; planning (where we will get council approval and a DA), foundation building (mostly digging and making a mess), wall building (the real hard work of the build), roof and floor building (putting a cap on the lot) and finally finishing (where the bare bones of the house become livable, hopefully).

At the moment we are in the planning stage. We have engaged a company to help us deal with the intricate details of council approval;Curvatecture, a company that specialises in SuperAdobe, or Earth Bag building and in round building. The lovely Hayden has been nothing but helpful and encouraging throughout the early days of this plan. We have gone from a vague notion of a round house made from earth to a very specific plan with measurements and everything. We are discovering the joys of filling out not only an application to build but a BASIX certificate and a fire danger assessment and plan. Not to mention the need for an engineer to do a soil test and sign off on our building plans. All of which are necessary to ensure our house is properly designed and built, but are costly and enthusiasm sucking activities (like learning times tables).

This is the current plan…more or less. The lounge and kitchen area will face the north east

I am determined to take more photos of this build. Below are some shots taken from the site of our future house;

East view

North view

South view

West view

Knowing us this will be a long, drawn out process filled with interesting little side adventures and a lot of laughs. Join us for the fun. There is talk of having a workshop or volunteer program happening when we get to the building part, but that is a long way into the future so I’m not making any plans yet.