House building in Brisbane.

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG YOU ARE INVITED , TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. Anyhow, here I will publish my own diary and what I see happening in the world, and when I do not have much to say, I will write posts from my life story. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com,  

My other sites; https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/  

Farming today compared to the old way, My life my struggles, 

Hub Pages, DIY brickwork. and this article at this link, House building in Brisbane. 

This is how stand alone affordable houses were built in the sixties, they had verandas all around because of the hot climate. This house above is built an a brick base and stumps, it still had all the same fetures of the old timber house on wooden stumps, but it had also some living space under the house. 

Welcome to my article, House building in Brisbane. 

Dear readers, what we are writing in this blog, is about house building in Brisbane in the sixties, today they may be build in a different way, but we stil build them. Anyhow, we must build houses to live in them, so, in this article we are talking about that, because this is what I did when I came to Australia; so, we are talk about house building in Brisbane in the sixties. I know that today building houses can be different from then, but not very much. Anyhow, we are going to talk about house brick bases, and working as a brickies labour.

House building in Brisbane in the sixties, was and is different from the old continent of Europe, because over there most houses are made of masonry, timber over there is more expensive than in Australia, and because of the colder climate. You see, thick walls of masonry absorb the heat during summer and act as storage of this heat by releasing it slowly during the colder months.  Anyhow, houses over there are built mostly from masons’ bricklayer and concreters, and the carpenters play a smaller part than they do in Australia.

Therefore, when we the European migrants came to Australia in the sixties, we thought this is strange to live in timber houses, and we were surprised to see that the carpenter played the role of builders, when houses were being built, because in the sixties most houses were made of timber, we are saying this to compare houses building, between the old continent and Australia in those times. Now we are not saying that this was good or bad practice, since we soon accepted the way of life we found, and we thought there must be a good reason for it.

So, we all did what we had to do in whatever employment we found, and those of us who ended up working in the building industry, we did what we were told to do. But as we know, everything changes with time. As we will see later, when building houses with timber will change even here. Now that we have made this comparison, let us go back to what I was doing myself in helping to build these houses. Therefore, let us talk about how most houses were being built by teams of workers, because that is how we were building houses in Southeast Queensland in the sixties.

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House building in Brisbane in the sixties. 

In the sixties and seventies, most houses building were done from teams of subcontractors, who had their own team of building workers, even if they were only a small team of two or three people, like the team I was working with, which had two tradesman and one labour (myself).  Now let me go over briefly what sort of teams were there; first there were the concreters and bricklayers. When building small houses that did not have a lot to do with these trades, concrete and brickwork could be done from the same team; then there was the carpenter team, then the roof, the electrician and the plumber and the plasters. The work of the builder, which most times was the leading carpenter, because he had the largest job; not only he was building the timber frame of the house, but had to organise all the teams in a way that was appropriate, so that they were not in each other way while they were working, and finally do all the finishing work required.

In those times to be a builder of these standalone houses on an approved block of land was easy, as long as you were a building tradesman and had building knowledge and had the money to build them, you had this opportunity to build one of these houses, of course there were local authority inspections to be had while we were building, but if you knew what you were doing it was easy to pass. So, there were many house builders around that would hire teams of building workers as we were.

I need to say that the building industry in Australia is one of the main driving forces of the economy, since it employs lots of people that are willing to do hard physical work to earn their living, you see you don’t need to be a learned person to work on the building, all you need is common knowledge of things and enough English to understand what is wanted from you, if you know what you are doing; or you work with people that speak your native language and they explain to you what you need to do, but you had to work hard to keep this job.

I believe that in the sixties and seventies there were good opportunities to work on building houses, because the price of the houses was more affordable than they are today. Just looking back at those prices, we can say that one of those cheaper houses would be worth about four time the average wage of a person working full time for a year, so, most people could afford them; therefore, those builders that were building them were able to sell their houses at a decent profit that would enable them to build other houses.

As we know things changes with the passing of time, as we have said, in the beginning houses in Brisbane were mostly made of timber, and they were set on timber stumps, then in the sixties because the timber stumps would rot or they would be attacked by white ants they gave way to concrete stumps, and some brick walls under the house. Then from just a brick wall in front of the house they changed to a full brick base and concrete stumps or steel posts, then came the era of the brick veneer and finally concrete and cavity bricks. Today, I must point out that building apartments is different from the sixties, they are mostly made of reinforced concrete. 

Now that we have said a few things about the history of house building in Brisbane, let us talk about my contribution in the building industry and what I did during the earlier part of working building houses. If I remember right in my last article, I was talking about how we were concreting the stumps for a new house, and we had laid the foundations for brickwork, therefore, let us talk about the brickwork that we had to do, to build a brick base under the house.

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 Brick base under timber houses. 

As we have said, there were many types of houses being built in the sixties, some of them had a brick base, or the front wall under the house built in bricks. So, this was another job that we did with our small team of bricklayer and concrete workers.

In order to be efficient and competitive a small team that lays bricks needs to be made of two bricklayers and a labour, of course larger teams can work well with a different number of people, anyhow this is what was like then and our team had two bricklayer and a labour as myself.

Now that I have explained that, let us start working, so that I can describe how things work out, who does what, and how it should be done. It is the bricklayers’ foreman that decides from where to start. But if he is not there, then it is up to whoever is there to start getting ready where the bricklayers must start. This is not hard to know because to lay bricks you must start from the lowest part of the foundation, So, when I was working as a bricklayer labour, I would get ready the bricks and the combo-boards, at the lowest point of the foundation, so, when the bricklayers had to start, all I had to do, was to give them fresh mixed mortar on these combo-boards, and then continue to supply them with brick and mortar as required.

Here I should say, that it is hard work for the bricklayer-labour and for the bricklayers, because at the end of the day one has to handle so many bricks, since in a day a bricklayer on a normal wall is supposed to lay on average 400 to 500 face bricks, or up to a thousand common bricks, of course this is wishful thinking and most times we didn’t, but we had to try to get there; this is how the bricklayers’ team works. Now let me break it down and describe what the labour does, and then what the bricklayers have to do; I know all this because later I became and worked as a bricklayer for decades myself, but now let us talk about what the bricklayers’ labour does.

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What you do, when you are working as a brickies labour.

The brickies labour job is hard work, it is also a semiskilled work, since he has got to know how to make mortar and to supply mortar and bricks to the bricklayer at the right time in the right place. It is obvious that he must have at his disposition a mixer to mix mortar and wheelbarrows, other small devises to help him achieve that.

Here I need to point out that to start a new job it is very hard, as the ground on the site is not flat and there are hips of dirt around the foundations where the brick or block walls are going to be built, so, the labour needs first to flatten the ground a bit, so that the mortar boards and the bricks can be positioned at the right distance from the foundation, this is about 60 centimetre plus from the walls that are being built, so that the bricklayers have enough room to move and at the same time they can reach the bricks and the mortar-boards without walking; in order to achieve that there needs to be one mortar boards and then one stack of bricks, and again one mortar board and another stack of brick, and so on for the whole length of the wall being built. Now that we have made it ready, the bricklayers are going to start to lay bricks, let me prepare the mortar, which some people may call cement or combo.

Preparing or mixing the mortar

There are rules to follow how to mix good mortar, so, one must keep in mind first what sort of material is available and can be delivered on the local site, because quantity and quality may vary with the locality. Anyhow, let us assume that for this job a load of brickies loam has been delivered on the site; in this case this brickies loam has some lumps in it, so, it needs to be screened before or after mixing the mortar, as I have screened it, I am ready to mix it now.

So, I start the mixer and put in clean water, and a small measure of mortar mix (this is a chemical that helps the mortar to be more workable) then I put in say a shovel full of Portland cement and four shovels full of brickies loam, this is how we usually mix mortar to lay bricks, it is one part of cement to four parts of loam by volume, therefore, for bigger batches you can have say; three shovels full of cement and twelve shovelful of loam and so on. Of course, these quantities can vary, if for instance it is written in the specifications that the mortar must be made with different amounts of materials.

Anyhow, let me go back to this batch of mortar that I have mixed to the right consistency; Now, I take the wheelbarrow near the mixer and tip the mortar in the wheelbarrow, and then take the wheelbarrow with the mortar near the mortar boards, here I wet the mortarboards before I place the mortar on them and finally I am ready for the bricklayers to get started. From now on I must make sure that the bricklayers have always enough mortar and bricks, otherwise they will we shouting at me Bricks! Or combo! (Or mortar!)

Dear readers, if I have missed a few things you have to use your own common sense to get everything going the right way, you see, most things on the building site is plain common sense.

I believe that I have said enough in this article, although there is a lot more to be said, how the bricklayers are going to lay bricks for this brick base. But I am going to leave it for next article, which we are going to call, DIY brickwork, there I will try to explain it in as many details as I can, how to build a house brick base. In fact, we are going to write a group of articles about bricklaying and other building trades; I hope that I can line them up in such a way that they make sense, and it is easy to follow. Anyhow, see you soon in our next article, DIY brickwork 

To see more click on this link, House building in Brisbane. 

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Australia affordable houses.

 WELCOME TO OUR BLOG YOU ARE INVITED , TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. Anyhow, here I will publish my own diary and what I see happening in the world, and when I do not have much to say, I will write posts from my life story. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com,  

My other sites; https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/  

Farming today compared to the old way, My life my struggles, 

To see more, DIY brickwork. and this article at this link,  Australia affordable houses. 

We need houses to live in, so, there are all sort of house being built continually, but we can only live in houses we can afford, not many people can afford large beautiful house, therefore, because small houses would be more affordable than large ones and attract more buyers, that is the reason why there are builders that build small affordable houses. 

Welcome to my article,  Australia affordable houses. 

When I came to Australia,  I was working building these affordable houses. In those times, new affordable houses were built on the fringe of the city in new suburbs, which is the same as today, if you want a new affordable house, you must look for it, in the new suburbs. 

As we know, houses are not all the same, because houses come in a variety of styles and sizes. Of course, we want to live in the best houses available, but most of us cannot afford expensive houses, therefore, we should be happy to live in any house that we can afford to buy or rent.

For this reason of affordability, to satisfy the house supply market, there are several types of house that are being built at any given time. In this article, we are going to talk about the type of houses that I ended up working on, in the early sixties. Because this article is meant to cover the story of my life, and what I did for a living.

In the early sixties, I ended up working on average houses that the working class could afford to buy, or at least the aim of the builders that were building them, was based in this affordability, since they had designed them with this purpose, because in the end, even though they had been built cheap not all of us workers would afford to buy these types of houses. But anyhow this was the purpose of building these types of affordable houses in the early sixties.

Now let us try to describe how we were building these houses from scratch.

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Building houses from scratch.  

Anyhow, I am writing these article about building houses from scratch, because I believe that knowing how houses are built is useful to know, since knowing a few things about building houses comes handy at times; you see, we live in houses, therefore, we want to know as much as we can about them. Because we need to know how to do it yourself repairs and other things, since houses need to be maintained, if we want to enjoy them fully. So, I am going to describe how these houses were built, with as many details as I can, so that anyone interested can learn something useful from these building articles.

Now, I was working with this Italian builder, which was good for me because my native language is Italian. Now, with this builder not only we were re-stumping or building rooms under the existing houses, which required a lot of work to be done by hand, but we were building new houses from scratch. As I have said, at the beginning of the sixties most of the digging were done by hand, specially the type of work that we were doing on these new houses, as machines were expensive to hire then, So, they were used only, if there was a lot of digging to be done, and with the machines of those days we could only dig straight forward things and not small detailed digging, as they were required to build these houses, anyhow as I said, I did a lot of this digging work myself, as I was employed as builder labour, and this was one of the jobs that I had to do.

Therefore now, let us imagine that I have finished digging the foundation and these stump holes for this new house, and now, we need to lay concrete in the foundation, and to concrete the stumps foundation and the stumps themselves. So, let us go over what we had to do, because in those times these things were all done by hand and started from scratch.

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 Making your own concrete. 

Making your own concrete on site from scratch

Let me explain, what is meant by concrete in buildings and how it is made, because you may find that it is useful to know how to make your own concrete, so that you understand what is required and how and why it must be done in certain ways, you will find this information written in this article. Some people can say that today things are different, when we can buy concrete ready mixed by truckload, or in bags and all you need to do is to add water to make concrete. I say, okay, you can do that. But there are times and places, when you must do these things the old way.

Therefore, I believe that you still need to know how concrete is made from scratch, therefore, let me tell you how we were mixing our concrete in the sixties, and what is required to do that and how it is supposed to be done, if you want a good job done and the concrete to last a long time.

By the way, here we need to clarify one thing, what is meant by the word concrete, because most people replace it with the word cement. On building sites, the word concrete means the element mixed together able to harden to a solid consistency within a certain length of time, therefore, it has got to be done the right way.

One of the most important things while mixing concrete is that the concrete must be well mixed and to a workable consistency using the least amount of water possible, because if too much water is used then the concrete becomes weaker, therefore, it must be done properly.

Usually concreting and other jobs are done according to its specifications, you see, any firm that makes building plans, for a house or something of more importance, they must write also the specification how the job needs to be done. In these specifications it will be written what material to use, how to use it and the quantity and quality required. Therefore, to concrete a foundation for an average small house, the specification could state that the concrete must be mixed to a consistency at least 1 to 6; for people that know this it meant that to mix the concrete you should use 1 part of Portland cement 2 parts of river sand and 4 parts of gravel (aggregate) and mix it as required until an even consistency is achieved. For the stumps usually would be a bit more cement than the foundations. 

Now let us say that we are ready to start mixing the first batch of concrete. To make concrete you need at least four elements of materials plus clean water; 1 Portland cement, 2 washed river sand, 3 clean or washed gravel and 4 reinforcement steel rods, and it is helpful if you have a mixer if you have to mix a large amount of concrete, because to mix by hand is hard work and the concrete needs to be well mixed.

Now let us start the mixer and make the first batch, while the mixer is turning around, the very first thing you put in the mixer is water, one must be careful not to put too much water to start with, it has got to be just enough to mix everything to a certain consistency, so, let us say that we put 8 litres of water (the amount of water can be different, since it depends on the amount of water that is already in the (sand gravel) aggregate) then we put in the mixer cement, next is the river sand twice as much as the cement and then the clean gravel 4 time as much as the cement; here the mixer is going around and mixing everything together.

Please note, that if you change the way you put your materials in the mixer, from what I have described above, you may have different result, and usually it would take longer to mix everything properly and to the right consistency.

For people that do this job all the time it is easy for them to see if the concrete that is being mixed has the right consistency required, once you know this, if it is too dry just add a bit of water and if it is too wet you should add a bit of everything else. 

What I have written above applies only to house building of less importance, for building that are large and important the concrete needs to be to a very high standard and specifications, so, here again you need to know what is needed before you do anything.

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Concrete requires teamwork.  

To concrete well and do a fair amount of work you need a team, even if it is a small team. Our team was usually three of us, I as builder labour, John as bricklayer and Con the contractor who was a bricklayer and concreter. We didn’t mind if we switched around a bit to do the job. So, I was usually on the mixer mixing the concrete, one was with a wheelbarrow taking the concrete from the mixer to the foundations that we were concreting, and one was fixing the concrete in place.

Fixing the concrete for the foundation was physically the lightest job, when we were mixing the concrete with this mixer on site, but it is the most responsible job, because while concreting the foundations, you must make sure that the steel rods reinforcement was in the right position, at the same time you had to pack the concrete down and then the concrete in the foundations has to be finished level, this was easy when the ground was level, but when the ground was not level, it was necessary that steps were made and they had to be to gauge, which was equal to the thickness of one or two laid bricks or more, or the thickness of a laid block, if blocks were going to be used to build the walls on this foundation, whatever was going to be used to lay on the foundations, we had to try to make an adjustment while we were laying the foundations; therefore, this was the job for the experts, at that time it was not that hard, because mixing by hand even using a mixer was a slow job, so, the bloke that was fixing the concrete had enough time to do his job right.

What I have written above is how we used to lay small house foundations in the early sixties, which are the same as we lay foundations today, except that today we order concrete already mixed, but we have to be ready with everything and everything has got to be in the right place, because the concrete ready-mix truck will unload its concrete quickly, so, there is no time to do anything else except to fix the concrete at the right level as quickly as possible.

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Concreting stumps on site. 

Now let me go back again to the early sixties, when we were concreting these stumps on site, this procedure is not done much today, because the buildings have changed, and today short concrete stumps can be made in a concrete factory, and when cured can be delivered to the building site, where the worker can erect them as required.

To concrete these stumps on site we had steel forms of various length, and these forms were assembled together with steel pins, so, we would assemble these steel forms and then start to mix concrete, we had also to make sure that the stumps foundations were exactly in the right place by using the marked profiles and tight line between them.

In this case, it was an easy job for the fellow that is mixing concrete, but a lot harder for the blokes that had to pour the concrete in the stumps formwork and make sure that the stump was exactly in the right place and finished at the right height and were also plumb (perfect vertical position). It was also necessary that some reinforcing rods were placed in the right position with a purpose made devise. These are how we made those onsite stumps in the sixties.

These concrete stumps that we made in the sixties were better that the timber stumps that they were replacing, because it was an improvement as they did not rot with the passing of time and the white ants could not eat them. Here we can say that these concrete stumps on site were easy to make, if you knew the procedure, in fact it was easier to make a set of stumps than to fix concrete stumps made in the factory, as there is no heavy lifting involved.

I believe that we have said enough in this article, as we have explained the work that we did on these affordable houses, so, see you in our next article, House building in Brisbane

To see more click on this link, Australia affordable houses. 

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Australian housing industry.

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG YOU ARE INVITED , TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. Anyhow, here I will publish my own diary and what I see happening in the world, and when I do not have much to say, I will write posts from my life story. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com,  

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

To see more, DIY brickwork. and this article at this link,  Australian building industry.  

In Australia in the early sixties, they were still building timber houses, because they were cheaper to build, and there was good cheap timber available. A three bedroom house like this one above, was called the workers cottage, because workers could afford to buy it. So, they were sold quickly, and from the money the small builders got, could soon start to build another one. But even if it was  good busyness things slowly changed for the better, and better houses were built.   

Welcome to our article, Australian building industry. 

Dear readers, we are going to write about DIY brickwork and other building things, because we believe that it can help people that are willing to try DIY small building or repairs, but first let me explain how I acquired that knowledge myself.

When I came to Australia in the sixties, I ended up working in the building industry, we were working mainly on fixing old houses, or building new house from scratch, units and warehouses, so, I ended up learning how lots of building things were done, in the end I became a bricklayer, and have worked most of my life as a bricklayer.

Anyhow, in this article we are going to write about; the Australian housing industry in the sixties; Working in the Australian building industry; Earning and saving money if you can; and Working with this Italian builder.

We believe that the Australian housing and building industry, is one of the major employment industries in Australia, you can say that this is so in other countries. But I believe that in other countries building new houses is not as important as it is in Australia. One of the reasons for this is that Australia is a new country, it needs and takes in many emigrants. In the sixties Australia was taking emigrants in a regulated way, now because the population grows steadily also accommodation need to grow steadily, therefore, new houses need to be built to keep a steady balance. This building of new houses gives opportunities for the newcomers to be employed, since there is manual work involved, therefore, a healthy cycle is created; but even with these opportunities the building industry has its ups and down, as we know. So, let us talk about it and try to make sense, if we can.  

You know, the housing building industry and real estate work together to complete the cycle of supplying to the public what is needed, so, both have their ups and downs. It could have been helpful if one could foretell what is going to happen next year, on the housing market, but it is not possible to guess what is going to happen in the future. If people can know this, then they could make money, since they could invest their money at the right time. Now, for those buying a house and saving to buy a house. We are going to write another article later. 

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In the seventies, a lot of houses like this one above were built. Most of them were brick-veneer, this means that the main frame was still build with timber, but the exterior walls were made of bricks, so, there were a lot of different things happening. Later on, some of these house were made of bricks and concrete. Anyhow, let us look at what work we did then.   

Working in the building industry. 

When I came to Australia, I ended up working in the building industry. Now let me explain this working position, working on building in Australia is a temporary job, because even the employer is subject to the same opportunities of work and he cannot help it, therefore, one is never sure what is going to happen next, when the job you are working on is finished, therefore, there were concerns about our employment status, so, we kept asking ourselves, whether our employer would get another job to do, before we finished the one we were doing, but even though we were thinking that, we still worked hard to finish the job as soon as possible, because to find work you had to be competitive.

Well I should say that although this small Italian builder did lots of small jobs, it did work out all right most times, so, we were able to move from one job to another all-around Brisbane and to other close by towns. Of course, this would cause worries if you had no transport of your own and you had to rely on some friends or the employer to take you on the work site, where the building was going to be built, but we managed somehow.

I remember that there were times, when I had to get up early and catch the first tram to the city, and then I had to catch the second tram to another suburb, where the builder would pick me up and drive me to the onsite job, in the evening after eight hours or more of hard work, I had to go back home, which took again a long time, but anyhow we managed all right, after all we were here in Australia to earn money, so, as long as we had a job to go to and earn money, we were happy to do that. You see, on building sites workers can earn above other people wages, but there was this uncertainty because there was no guaranty that the work would last, and it also was hard work all day long.

Anyhow, it was a good job with good opportunities to learn and improve your knowledge of building something yourself. You see, in those times we could improve our working and earning position more easily than today; it was possible then because a lot of things were simple, and therefore, they could be done just by using your common sense. Of course, there were always inspections from local authorities to follow, but once you knew what it was required, they were easy to follow, if you used your brains diligently, therefore, we should say that we had more opportunities then compared to today opportunities. I believe that it was so, because the building we were building were small houses, so, if you were a tradesman, you most likely could be the builder as well.

Having said that, now let us see, how this type of work affected us newcomers moneywise.      

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Learning how to earn and save money. 

Whatever you do in life, the most important thing is; Earning and saving money. In my case, because there was uncertainty of not having a permanent job in the building industry, we soon learned that whatever money we earned from our job, we had to save some, otherwise we could have problems soon or later; so, this disadvantage that we had in this job pushed most of us building workers to become good at saving money, because we wanted to feel safe and independent.

So, let me talk about money. In Australia because the economy is based on capitalism the more money you can earn and save the better off you are; of course, this is also true to most other part of the world, but in Australia seems to be more so, because it is a new country, and people rely more on what they can earn than anywhere else in the world. This is because there are not existing reach families that live on the earnings of the properties that have been passed down from generation to generations. Therefore, in Australia is mostly up to yourself, if you want to get richer, you should try harder to earn and save money. You see, most of the people here, have earned their own money.

Therefore, we must understand that in Australia, not only you have to try to earn money, but it is important that you should save it too, and at the same time you have to try to improve your working position, so, you can be more independent and not rely on others. This attitude can help if it happens that you lose your temporary job, and also by saving money you can start one day buying your own house, which is the most important thing that people must do, if they want to live an independent decent life. 

Anyhow, I believe that I have said enough about this money business; so, let me go back to tell you, my progress in the building industry and what I did to become a tradesman.

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Working for this builder. 

Working and learning with this small Italian builder

Dear readers, in these articles, while I am telling you the story of my life, about working in the Australian building industry, I am going to try to give you details of how things were done in those days, it could be helpful to some of you, because you already know how we built them.

Now let me go back to when I started work with this Italian builder, who was a bricklayer and concreter, we were working on houses and because there was not enough bricklaying work on these houses, as they were mostly built with timber, we were building only the foundations, the concrete stumps and some brickwork as the base of the house. Of course, we did also some jobs under the existing houses, and this has given me an opportunity to learn many things about those old houses in Brisbane.

Just for comparison’s sake, to see the difference between those times and today, let me describe to you what we did to prepare a new base for a new timber house, which would be setting on concrete stumps and some brick walls.

First of all, we went to set up the site, if it was not set up from the builder or carpenter that was building the timber house. This setting up required that we should fix some timber frame to the ground with pegs and per the measurement in the plan. These timber frames are called profiles, and they are marked accurately to the measurement on the plan, so that we had the right measurement to go by, to start digging the foundations for the stumps and brick walls.

Then we had to dig the foundations, and this was mostly my job as I was the labor and I was pretty good at digging, this may seem hard to believe but even digging one has to be an expert to do a good job, as the shape and depth of the foundations is important to do a good job. Just to show you what I mean to dig a hole for a new concrete stump, 20x20 centimeters as most stumps were supposed to be; the hole for this stump should be in exactly the right place, it should be at least sixty centimeters deep in natural ground and at the bottom should have a circumference of at least 40 centimeters or more. These were the average specifications then, unless it was stated otherwise. I know this because I have dug several hundreds of them if not thousands.

All the tools that I needed to do this digging job were a pick a post hole shovel and a crowbar, it usually would take me a couple of days to dig the entire house holes, which could usually be between twenty and thirty holes. You see I was able to dig a hole in less than half an hour, but it was hard work. Sometimes when there was some brickwork to do, we had also to dig these foundations by hand; the foundations were usually dug according to specification, which then were about 60 centimeter deep in the natural ground, this means that if the grounds had been filled up that filling should not be counted as depth.

Anyhow, before I finish writing this article, I want to say that those houses that we were building in the sixties, with this builder contractor that I was working for, they were average affordable house that the average family could afford to buy, and therefore, they were sold easily.

Now, I believe that I have said enough in this article and although there is a lot more that can be said, we are going to tell you in our next article, which is going to be about how we made those concrete stumps on site, while we were working on these,  Australia affordable houses. 

To see more click on this link, Australian building industry.  

See you soon.

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Australia offers work opportunity.

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG YOU ARE INVITED , TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. Anyhow, here I will publish my own diary and what I see happening in the world, and when I do not have much to say, I will write posts from my life story. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com,  

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

To see more, DIY brickwork. This article at this link, Australian houses in Brisbane. 

Today people still believe that Australia is the lucky country, and the land of opportunities, because a lot of people want to emigrate to Australia. But are there really many opportunities, and how does that compare with the old Australian way of life, like when I came to Australia in the sixties?  

Is Australia the land of opportunity?

Work opportunity in Australia.   

Welcome to our article, Is Australia the land of opportunity? 

Dear readers, when I came to Australia in the early sixties, there were good opportunities to work. So, in this article we are going to compare those opportunities. 

So, let us start by telling you the opportunities that we had when I came to Australia, to the opportunities that we have today in Australia, and how those opportunities played a part in the lives of those people that migrated to Australia.  

Anyhow, I feel that today is different, but I suppose that every one of us feels different, Whether we are emigrant, or we have been born here we have our own story to tell, according to our life experiences and the work that we did; but let me tell you my personal story, so that you can see my own experience the same way as I have seen it, then compare it to today’s opportunities, if you like.

If I were to use only my personal experience in Australia as a standard, we must say that Australia opportunities today are not as good as they used to be, because things have changed. Now if we want to compare the fewer opportunities that are available today, with what used to be available in the sixties, you can use my life story, because I am going to write my life story, just the way I have seen things happen to me and to other people that came to Australia in the early sixties, so, my life story opportunities can be compared with what is available today. 

Anyhow, everybody in the wide world thinks that Australia is still the land of opportunities, and that is the reason why people are trying to migrate to Australia. Having been an emigrant myself a long time ago, and being lucky to find some relative that helped me to settle in Australia, I know that migrating to another country is not an easy thing to do, especially if there is no one waiting for you and help you when you arrive, and it is even harder if you don’t speak the language of the country you are migrating to, but today there is a great movement of people throughout the world that migrate from one country to another, and a lot of people want to come to Australia, they even risk their lives during their journey, boarding unseaworthy boats that can break up and disintegrate in the ocean, and they can drown, because there is no help.

Looking at what is happening today, we know that the entire world has problems with people migrating to other countries like Australia. Here in Australia we are upset to see people coming in by boats, and we want to stop them, or send them back where they came from. Now, I need to say that in Europe is even worse with people coming in from North Africa every day, they are so many that is hard to count them, and we guess and say that the same amount of people that migrate illegally to Australia in a year may migrate to Europe in a week or even less than that.

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But, is Australia still the land of opportunity? 

If I use my personal experience as a standard, then I can say that today in Australia work opportunities are not as good as they used to be. But then not everything is as it seems to me, because my judgment is that of a single person and therefore, I might be wrong.

So, let us try to see what has changed since I came to Australia. There are many things that have changed since then; therefore, working opportunities have changed, so, today it is a lot harder to find a manual job; this is due to the fact that we do not need as many hands to do a job, because the hard labor is being done from machines, therefore, people that have no skills and rely on their physical strength to work are not required. For this reason, there are less jobs available, but if people have a trade or have studied there are working opportunities for them.

Now let me tell you my experience when I came to Australia, because this is the way that we can compare the work opportunity situation.

Today this sounds an impossible achievement, but there have been times in Australia when everybody had a job, so, there was no unemployment at all, from stories that I have been told from people that were already here when I came, there have been times that the employers had not enough employees and they would go down to the wharfs when the ships arrived and select a few people that seemed good enough for them to do their jobs, therefore, in those days there were no unemployed people, but unfortunately those times do not last long, as I said working opportunities go up and down.

Now to compare those times with today’s’ opportunities, we are going to describe part of my own life story, so, let us see what opportunities were available then.

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What sort of opportunities were available in Australia? 

When I arrived in Australia in March 1961 my relative and friends were all working, at the same time they were telling me that there were not many job vacancies available, so, I had to be patient until a job was available. But what sort of work I could do they were not sure just we had to wait and see, what I knew about working for other people was that if a job was offered to me I had to work hard, since in my country when we hired workers to work in our family farm, we expected them to work hard so that they would earn their pay, therefore, I was in my right frame of mind to go out and work hard, whatever job was offered would do me just fine. I have said this, because it is necessary to understand that whoever attempts to migrate to another country, he/she must be ready to work hard if they want to succeed, and it all boils down to this, you need to do a fair work day for fair daily pay.

Beside my willingness to work I was also young and fit enough to do any manual job that I was offered, the only problem was that I didn't speak English, I had learned perhaps a few words on the way to Australia while we were sailing, as there was an English teacher on the ship for that purpose. But as we know English is a hard language to learn, especially if one comes from a country that their language is phonetic and once you know some rules, one can read from a book and come close to the sound how those written words are pronounced, but English is not written phonetically, so, to learn English one must be exposed to the English speaking people and slowly learn from them, so, I and other emigrant like me had a lot to learn, before we could speak English well enough to look after ourselves, and to fit in the Australian speaking community.

Anyhow, let us tell you that although I had very little English, things turned out all right in the end, perhaps this is another reason why people think that Australia is still the land of opportunities.

For me when I came to Australia I was thinking that I was on my own, so, I had to find my own way around, but here I had a pleasant surprise when for the first time some relative took me to see the unemployment office.

In Italy when you go to an Italian office if you want something done quickly you need to know somebody in there, otherwise before your turn comes the office hours are over and you have to come back the day after, so, I was wondering how could we succeed in these Australian offices, since I didn’t speak English and my friend was just a little bit better than me.

Anyhow we waited our turn and soon we were being interviewed from this middle aged man that seemed to have so much patience and understanding of the situation, he slowly worked out what we wanted by asking and repeating what we did not understand, and he noted everything down as he asked me many things to see what sort of job I could do, I remember even now that one of his questions was if I were afraid of heights and I said no, as I was going up some tall trees to prune them, he also asked if I knew anything about building or building maintenance, here again I said yes as we sometimes repair some farm building. I believe that these two things gave me the first job in the building industry, as I was called one day to go to work for the first time in Australia. My first job was that of a bricklayer labor, and we were working on a chimney stack in the brickworks where bricks are made, which I managed to hold for a couple of weeks, until a bigger gang came and I became a bit confused in the middle of all those people, and I lost my first job for lack of knowledge or lack of understanding English. But anyhow I had my first work experience and I was sure that soon there was going to be another one.

Anyhow, I need to say that Australia is a great country to be in, because people are given their opportunities as they deserve, if you are willing to work hard for it. And in the unemployment offices the officers are just great people to deal with. Well, it was like when I came to Australia, today things might be a bit different.  

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Australia building industry. 

Anyhow, my first job in Australia was in the building industry, because I ended up working as a bricklayer’s labor, but I lost that job for a couple of reasons. I believe that I lost the first job, because I didn’t know English and at the same time, I had no experience in the sort of work we were doing, and for that reason I could not guess what they wanted me to do next. After that I had another job which ended very much the same way; but then one day suddenly a small Italian builder needed a labor and he knew that I was available, so, he came to fetch me and asked if I would be interested to work for him, and this is how I ended up working in the building industry, I worked for this builder for about two years, but then he went on holiday to Italy for a long time, therefore, he temporary closed down the business, but by then the Italian building community new about me, so, in a few days I had another job to go to, always in the building industry with another builder or contractors working as a bricklayer labor.

You see in those times there was work for people wanting to work, but we had to work hard because there was a lot of competition going on, so, what could we say if we work hard for it, we would always find somebody that would give us work, because we earned our wage plus a bit more for the employer. This is how I understood the ways of earning your living in this capitalist society, which is based on competition and you are paid with what you deliver.     

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Compare the old ways with the new

Here we want to compare we want to compare what we had to do to come to Australia in the sixties, with what is happening today with illegal emigration, to spot the reasons why things don’t work as good as they used to work. 

You see, when I and the other emigrants wanted to come to Australia during the sixties, we had to be screened before we could have a visa that would allow us to come to Australia and work.

This screening was strict, as they did not want anybody that could become sick, so, we had to go through a medical check, and there was another stricter check about being legally of good character, even if you had ever had trouble with the police, in fact, they were so strict about this that if one had been involved with the communist party, by saying that you would vote for the communist party, you would not be allowed to come to Australia.

I hope that I have explained how strict they were then, before they gave you a visa to come to work in Australia. Anyhow, I can say that this screening the emigrants was a good thing after all, because after that it was a lot easier when you were in Australia, since they knew everything that they needed to know, so, the authorities were more relaxed. As I have said, when I went to the unemployment office even though I did not speak much English they did everything possible to find me a job, and if they could not find us a job soon enough, they would pay us the unemployment benefit.

Anyhow, from my own experience, I can say that anyone that has come and seen Australia the same way that I have seen it, they know that Australia is a great country to live in; and if there is somebody that does not like Australia, it must be because they have their own personal problems and they are home sick, or they are unwilling to work hard.

Today Australia does not seem to be as good as it was when I came to Australia, because there are more unemployed people, and it is hard for people to find permanent work. But in my eyes, it is still okay, you need to be more patient until you find a job.

Now, because today a lot of things are different, most of all the difference that exists between screened legal emigrant, and those emigrants that come illegally and the authorities don’t know anything about them. So, a comparison between these emigrants is not possible. Therefore, measuring the opportunities that exist is not possible either. 

Now, let me add this, even today there are some work opportunities in Australia, but you have to work in the rural areas, they always want fruit picker and other workers. But this is not a permanent job.    

Anyhow this article is becoming too long, so, see you next time with another article called; Australian building industry, where we will be continuing to tell you my life story and what I have done in Australia to earn a living. 

To see more click on this link, Is Australia the land of opportunity?

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