RESULTADOS Y DISCUSIÓN 4.1 Resultados

was an item to be found in most homes. Some questions also illuminate the state of childraising ideology, for example, the question, ’Should children's rooms be near the parents or well separated so that they don't disturb you?' This question acknowledges a parent’s right to privacy in a way that is not so apparent in later, more child-centred. literature.-0

However, despite the thinking behind the Parents Bulletin questionnaire, and despite the Housing Commission’s Report, the post-war building program in Canberra did not fu lfill the expectations encouraged by the level of debate. There is almost no evidence of the positioning of houses to take advantage of the winter sun, and cupboard space and kitchens were no larger in the post-war homes than they were in 1944.21 In fact, the kitchens of some O'Connor houses built in the 1950s could be said to be less convenient for mothers o f young children than those o f houses in Forrest built before the war.

Government houses built after the war varied little in size and shape; they tended to be small and compact. In 1955. the Principal Architect o f the Department o f Works (responsible for house construction in Canberra) explained the difference between pre­ war and post-war houses:

In the early days when utility houses were built, they were constructed rather in the grand manner. They had ten feet ceilings, bedrooms 15 X 10 feet, a fuel stove, an electric stove and outside porches. They were bigger houses. Since the war, everyone has learnt to understand what a square means in relation to houses. Before the war we did not talk o f squares. A fter the war everyone talked of squares and that meant how much you could cram into 100 square feet.22

The vast majority of post-war houses had three bedrooms, which were rarely adequate for the large families of the baby boom.23 Only one of the mothers I interviewed had fewer than three children; most had four or five, some had six or seven. The President of

20 I discussed in chapter two the shift in emphasis in beliefs about the rights o f children over adults in the fam ily.

2 1 These points can be confiremed by a walk around the streets o f old Canberra and some observation o f its unrcnovated houses.

2 2

R.M. Ure Principal Architect, Department o f Works, ACT SSC Evidence p658. There were also (as I indicated earlier) some very small pre-war homes.

2 2

In a 1956 sample o f 271 government homes in Canberra, 7 8 # contained three bedrooms; 2 1 # had two bedrexims; only two houses had lour bedrooms and one had one. NCW (AC T Branch) Housing Survey Report 1956.

107

the ACT Progress and Welfare Council, Kevin James Mulherin. spoke for these larger families at the Senate Select Committee hearings in 1954, claiming that 'there are not sufficient houses to cope with people who have four or five, or sometimes seven or eight. kiddies.'24 The Federal Public Service Journal also noted in 1958 that the bedrooms of Government homes being built at that time measured only 10 feet by 10 feet, which 'could accommodate two children at the most to a room.'2:>

When 1 asked mothers whether their houses were large enough for their families, the standard response was a variation of, 'We managed’. Yet many of them indicated in other ways that life was somew hat squashed. One woman described the Government house she was allocated in the 1950s (and still lives in) in the following way:

It’s got three bedrooms. The two smaller bedrooms are very small - 10 by 10. We had four children, and at that stage I had a teenaged daughter (from a previous marriage j. She wasn't here often, but when she was, it was a terrible squash.2(1

Another woman in a similar situation described her house before she had it extended: We had to have our lounge, dining table and chairs here in

the one {room), and then there was the three bedrooms and there was a little kitchen running along there. It was, well, it was quite compact. It was a typical little Government house. . . But with the four children, we had to put ourselves in the second bedroom, the three boys we built double bunk beds for in the big main bedroom, and our daughter in the back bedroom 2"

A similar pattern of stated satisfaction with houses followed by significant reservations on individual items was observed by the Canberra Branch of the National Council of Women in 1956 when they surveyed 296 householders, 'living in all types of

“4 K.J. Mulhenn SSC Evidence pl433. 2r' Federal Public Serv ice Journal July 1958 p6. 26 BK Interview.

"7

KK Interview; Also IW Interv iew. The situation was exacerbated for some families by the accepted custom, mentioned earlier in the context of waiting list eligibility, of not allowing boys and girls to share bedrooms. This notion was reflected in this comment of KK's and also VB's comment, 'Well we had all boys, so that made it easier.'

Government housing in all suburbs’ to obtain their views on various aspects of Government housing.28 The NCW found that:

the majority o f householders were satisfied with the size and shape of their block and the placement of the house on it, although in answering questions about these features, around 40% expressed some criticism.20

Overall, only 24% ot the sample questioned said they liked their present Government home well enough to buy it, although a further 27% said that although they did not like their present house, they would like to buy another type of house in Canberra. The NCW conclusion was:

These two results together appear to indicate that half of those renting Government houses might be prepared to buy, provided they had more choice of house.30

The NCW Survey reflected the earlier concerns about houses not being sited to take advantage of the sun, and many other aspects of house design to which I w ill return later in the discussion o f household tasks.31 However the most common public complaint about post-war Canberra homes, made by people whose qualifications to speak on the matter stemmed from factors other than simple residence, concerned not so much aspects of their liveability but rather their uninspiring monotony. One observer wrote: 'The same designs recur, over and over'32 This was particularly true in the 1950s in parts of O'Connor and the newer areas o f Ainslie where there materialised rows and rows o f identical houses, referred to by Senator Vincent o f the Senate Select Committee as 'doleful exhibitions of architecture'.33

A witness to the Committee complained of further monotony in that:

28 NCW Housing Survey Report.

29

NCW Housing Survey Report p i . 30 NCW Housing Survey Report p i.

3 1 'One third o f the householders were concerned w ith aspects o f heating, the m ajority being disturbed at either the lack o f heating in the houses or the house being placed so that it did not receive sufficient sun.' NCW Housing Survey Report p4.

32 CAB51 pl73.

~ - Sen V.S. Vincent SSC Evidence p398. Even the private houses tended to be ot a similar type and

standard in each locality, in part because the government regulated the block size and fixed a minimum cost o f houses to be built. Linge Canberra p!8.

Canberra must surely be unique in being the only capital city in the world where every house has the same door. I reter to the 'six light doors' which are to be found on every Government owned home in Canberra. What a ridiculous state of affairs when so little imagination or variation is expressed that, from hundreds of available front door designs, only one has been sele c ted /* * * 4

1 his w itness was the Director of the Timber Development Association and the 'six light doors' he referred to were not, as one Committee member thought, six distinct types ot door, but a single door 'with six frames of glass'.44 A timber developer complaining of too many glass doors is obviously open to a charge of self interest, but the interest of a mother at home with children on a cold winter's day would almost certainly have been better served by a north-facing glass door, even if it was exactly the same as all her neighbours'.46

The so-called monotony, or regularity, of housing did not seem to trouble residents unduly. Not one of the mothers I interviewed stated, or inferred, that the similarity between houses was in any way a disadvantage to them. From the residents' point of view , the critics of Canberra housing may have been more justified in their criticisms of building materials. In the pre-war years, brick was the most common building material, w ith a brickworks being one of the first structures erected in Canberra. But after the war the brickworks could not keep pace with demand, and the expense of importing bricks from elsewhere, together with the greater labour costs involved in bricklaying compared with building construction using other materials, led to a smaller percentage of brick houses being built47

Some of the alternatives (the prefabricated, monocrete and fibro constructions in the newer suburbs) attracted much criticism but again, aesthetics appear to be more important than liveability. For example, Robert Guy Bailey of the ACT Advisory Council. 44 E. Colin Davis SSC Evidence pl324.

44 E. Colin Daws SSC Evidence pl332.

46 1 base this statement on my own experience of living behind a government 'six light' door with two small children through six Canberra winters. True, it did need a heavy curtain over it at night, but during the day it was a wonderful source of warmth and light.

4 B.J. Waterhouse SSC Evidence pl684; See also CAB59 pl99. In 1950/51, of a total of 545 houses built by the Government, 252 (or 46%) were brick or brick veneer. By 1954/55, it was only 34%. ARADC for respective years.

For some time l have been disturbed by the housing development of the city. It started in O'Connor, one of the northern suburbs. There were subdivisions there having mainly 50 foot frontages. Those subdivisions were approved by the National C apital Plan n in g and Development Committee and then the Department of Works began to erect houses on those blocks. The type of house consisted of Riley-Newsums mainly. They were put on those blocks in rows like army hutments, giving a shooting gallery effect from one end of the street to the other.38

Riley Newsums were oblong Swedish pre-fabs that were 'put up very quickly in Ainslie, O'Connor, Narrabundah and Deakin to help with the housing shortage.'3‘; A total of 368 Riley Newsums were erected, most of them in 1953/54 w hen they constituted 47% of all Government housing erected that year.40 They were made of vertical weatherboards which reputedly shrank over time and left gaps; they were in no way an ideal home in which to raise children 41

More widespread than the Riley Newsums were the monocretes. described by one woman as:

. . . a pretty miserable house, they were not at all popular, not considered desirable at all. If you lived in one in those days you found it very cold, extremely cold. Some of them didn't have adequate damp courses or whatever and they were not considered a very satisfactory arrangement. . . The advantage (for the Government | was that it was a cheap construction.42

Seven hundred and thirty-two monocretes were erected between 1950 and 1958. 40% of them in O'Connor, although all existing suburbs had at least some 43 They were small and, as one inhabitant put it, 'when you got the house warm and it was cold outside, the water'd run down the walls.'44 Another claimed this was because the 38 R. G. Bailey SSC Evidence pl652-4. 5 0 ‘ RA Interview. 40 ARADC 1953/54. 41 JB Interv iew. 42 JB Interview. 43 ARADC 1950/51 - 1957/58.

concrete took years to dry out properly and:

The trouble was many people, including me. didn't know how to handle the damned thing, but you learnt very quickly. It meant that when you were cooking you had the windows open whether it was cold or winter or what have you, because the steam from the kitchen would run down the walls. 1 just opened the door. There was no fan or ventilation, not in the bathroom either. . . They were very cold, and hot in summer. So where the sun was, 1 planted bushes and trees. It didn't do much for the cold, but it helped with the heat.* * * 4'*

Another of the 1950s experiments w ith cheap housing was the transfer of a number of ex-officers' houses from Tocumwal, a RAAF training base in NSW. The 'Tocumwals', as they became known, were large and, as a volunteer social worker was told by the Department of the Interior, reserved for 'problem' families (by which the Department meant 'large', she discovered) 46 This woman lived in a Tocumwal herself:

There was a brick foundation, but the walls were made of fibro and weatherboard, and the roof corrugated iron. . . In summer it was kept relatively cool by a large verandah covered by a grapevine 4

It is significant that the Tocumwals were the only type of Government house in Canberra to have a verandah, and that was not through any conscious decision by the planning authorities, but because they were transported in that condition. Government- built houses in Canberra did not have verandahs. According to one mother, the rationale behind this was: 'if you had a verandah, you might leave the pram on it'.48 This was something the authorities did not want to encourage, as it might give Canberra an untidy look. Yet, it was unfortunate for mothers of young children that the aesthetics of the capital city did not allow for this most Australian of structures, the verandah, to be incorporated into standard house designs.49 As I will show later in relation to shopping

44 BG Interview.