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Govie houses

Our old home

The government needed to accommodate the burgeoning population so had a public housing plan where whole suburbs of near identical houses were built and rented to the public servants they were trying to lure into the new city.  These government houses were sold at a low price to the tenants and once sold were known as ex-govies.    Mostly they were modest brick veneer homes but in the older suburbs they were timber.

We owned an ex-govie in O'Conner - one of the timber variety and decided to pop by and see how it was looking today.  It was rendered and extended and looking quite swish and the neighbour even swisher - very hard to imagine the humble timber home that forms their bones.


He must be nuts having a front yard like that.  This is a street lined with oak trees!

Despite all the changes, some things don't change.  On the other side, the migrant neighbours with the huge vege garden still have their ugly letter box. In fact, that was how we located the house.


Just shows JM.  We do tiles in Australia too.





Comments

  1. JulieJuly 14, 2011 at 7:39 AM

    *grin* ... fancy locating a house by finding the near-by letter box! Govies were strange beasts weren't they. We avoided those areas for no apparent reason. Both our houses were privately built. But modest and in keeping ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. DianneJuly 14, 2011 at 8:51 AM

    Your old Govie house looks really swish - it's sometimes a bit nostalgic driving past a home with memories - Now I wouldn't trade my letter box for that tiled variety but at least it pin-pointed your location.

    ReplyDelete
  3. freefallingJuly 14, 2011 at 3:57 PM

    We stayed in O'Connor (5 Boronia Dr - is that near your old house?) on one of our last trips to Canberra - I thought it was just lovely.

    My auntie was one of those who headed down to Canberra to work and live in a hostel. I think it must have been the late 60's.

    I don't mind the mailbox - it's.....
    colourful?

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJuly 15, 2011 at 3:28 AM

    So I see, Joan! :-) I guess a letter box is the same as a mail box, right? If so, it's huge, I wonder why.

    ReplyDelete
  5. SusanJuly 15, 2011 at 8:04 AM

    Oh my goodness, that letterbox is the Lady Gaga of letterboxes ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Joan ElizabethJuly 15, 2011 at 7:29 PM

    Hi JM, I have no idea why it was so huge, that was the main reason why I disliked it so much at the time.

    Letty, doesn't seem so bad today, perhaps it takes the passage of time or fashion to swing back to 70s colours.

    Lady Gaga .. a good one.

    ReplyDelete

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