Around here

Easter is now over and it was indeed very different to our normal family gatherings.  On Saturday I thought it was Sunday and on Sunday I thought it was Monday.  We chilled out at home and did a big clean up of our entertainment area by moving the table, chairs, BBQ and Pizza Oven and seats and put them on the grass and then used the high pressure hose to clean the pavers.  After it was cleaned and dry everything else got wiped down from the all the dust and put back and now it looks great.

Living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia we have a very unique style of housing architecture with timber houses on stilts.  From the 1960's to 1970's Frank and Eunice Corley drove the suburban streets of Queensland in their pink Cadillac, taking photographs of houses and selling them to home owners.  They are thought to have taken over a quarter of a million photographs of houses from Bundaberg to Beenleigh.  Around two-thirds of the photographs were sold to householders, and the remaining 61,000 images were donated to the State Library in 1995.  The photos were sold as individual black and white prints for 99 cents or a personalised calendar for $1.50.  His Leica camera would take a roll of 36 pictures so he had to stop and change the film often.

The State Library of Queensland has put these images online at the "Corley Explorer" and the photos are listed by suburb.  The idea of the website is if you know anything about the house that you lived in or your Grandparents house you can fill in the details about the property, who lived there, who built it and any details you know about it.  What an amazing source of history of housing in Queensland.  There are some brick and stucco houses as well however, the typical "Queenlander" home was built of timber and on stilts with batons around the base allowing air flow in our tropical weather.  There were no built in wardrobes in these houses so people had to have stand alone wardrobes more than likely a silky oak wardrobe.

This is an example of the stories people have added to the photos.  In this article in the Brisbane Times there is a video you can watch about how these photos came to be donated.  The video is 4.5 minutes long and apart from the story of Frank and Eunice Corley the filming of this story is stunning.  The funny thing is that Doug Spowart is the guy in the video and he is responsible for the photos being preserved.   When I was 17 years old and bought my first SLR camera, a Canon AE1 film camera my best friend and I did our very first photography course with him including processing film in the dark room.  He and his Mother, Ruby Spowart had a studio at South Brisbane.

Here's some photos of our week.

Back yard evening moods.

Pretty pink flowers in the backyard.

Our cucumber plant.

I made some more Turkish bread this time using Nigella Seeds and Sesame Seeds 10 out of 10.

The kids made pasta for dinner on the weekend.

Home made fettucini.

Spaghetti Bolognese with home made pasta.

Eater treats for the kids.

Our new way of life for Term 2 in Queensland.