Free The Woman on the Mountain by Sharyn Munro Page B

Tony.
    His encouragement kick-started my formal writing. His dying made me even more determined not to be similarly sidetracked by daily life.

CHAPTER 6
SHELTER—SOME HOW, SOMETIME
    A few years ago, short of an Owner Builder story, I wrote about my own place, ‘Confessions of a Bad Muddie’. Looking at archival photos of me making mudbricks, in shorts and Indian shirt, or flared jeans and cheesecloth top, 1979 seemed long, long ago. My floppy straw work hat was actually a relic of my civil ceremony wedding, where I’d worn a cream trouser suit that hadn’t even been bought especially for the occasion.
    The lack of frills and fancies and romantic notions in my wedding was a fair indicator of the relationship. I didn’t know any better at nineteen, having been brainwashed into thinking that romance was an invention of Woman’s Day and Mills & Boon, and quite beneath any thinking person. I’ve learnt a little since then about romance.
    After visiting over 100 home-made houses, I’ve learnt a lot more about building. I still can’t explain why my husband and I did such an erratic job. Maybe because it was mud, and not ‘proper’ building materials, so it felt more like play?
    We came here with G.F Middleton’s classic Build Your House of Earth as our bible. It was so confidence-inspiring that we lurched into building our 8 metre x 5 metre one-room mudbrick cabin (meant to be Stage 1) with great enthusiasm untempered by any other knowledge or experience. It was also untempered by taking his advice to practise on something small first.
    Yet nearly 30 years later the cabin is still standing, giving me shelter plus offering a perfect example of what not to do when building in mudbrick. It will outlast me, and maybe those who inherit it. And as every one of the 1475 bricks was pressed into the moulds by my hands, it’s very personal—another bond with this place.
    The old bloke who sold us the land said he’d bulldoze a track in and level the house site as part of the deal. We got him to push the topsoil layer forward, and that became my interim vegie garden. A foot depth of the clayey subsoil was pushed sideways into a pile that gave enough material for our bricks, as well as a play ‘mountain’ for the kids. They were desolate whenever we had to dig into one of their elaborately constructed labryinths of roads, tunnels and quarries, when they had to dismantle their ‘sheds’ made of sticks and bark, and relocate their Matchbox toy vehicles.
    Building seemed so simple. I cut the tussock grass for straw to add to the mix, and carried buckets of water up from the spring, where the water trickled out of a clay slip in the hillside into a small hole that we’d edged with rocks. Clear and drinkable, and always a wonder.
    Over a pit we’d dug, we’d balance a chickenwire and timber screen. My husband would shovel the dirt onto that and I’d rub it through the ‘sieve’ with a piece of wood, which gradually wore to a smooth ellipse.
    We’d lift off the netting frame and my husband would hop in as the mixer. He’d be barefoot, as gumboots would refuse to part company with the mud base after a very short while. I’d start adding the water and straw.
    When it was the right consistency, he’d fill the barrow and wheel it over to the rows of hessian-covered platforms that we’d set up for brickmaking. We couldn’t do it on the ground because the ground wasn’t flat enough. In fact it was sloping enough for a full barrow or two to get away from him en route.
    I’d kneel beside the oiled timber double mould. With bare hands I’d spread and poke and pat the mix to fill the corners as he plopped the shovelfuls in. I’d stand to level the top, then ease the mould off, when, ever-magically, the bricks would emerge, just sitting there, slightly quivering, glistening dark grey-brown. With a stiff brush, in the tin bathtub of water, I’d quickly clean the mud off the mould and we’d do it again, and again. I can