Earth Garden editor, Alan T Gray, discovers that straw building in Australia dates back 60 years. by Alan T Gray Trentham, Victoria.

HAVE you heard about our 60 year old straw houses here in Melbourne?” came the talkback caller’s question through the radio headphones. I was at ABC Radio in Melbourne last November to talk about Earth Garden’s new book, Strawbale Homebuilding.
“No . . . ” was all I could manage to blurt out in stunned amazement (I’m not usually lost for words on radio). Before he hung up I managed to ask the caller to leave his phone number off air with the producers, and in the post-interview rush, promptly lost it. A week later I found it in the ‘confusion of documents’ also known as my office, and soon Barry Hanson, President of the Altona Historical Society, was showing me five straw panel houses built in 1940 in the western bayside suburb of Altona.
Yes, it’s true. Australia has straw houses that were built 60 years ago, are being lived in today, and are in perfectly good condition. The houses are workers’ cottages, built in a simple style typical of its day, and having no overhanging eaves to protect the cement-rendered straw panel walls.

Solomit

The five workers’ cottages at Altona were built using thick panels of compressed straw board — the original form of the modern straw panels that are sold today (and even advertised in Earth Garden) by the Melbourne-based company, Solomit. The building company, Strawbale Australia, regularly uses Solomit straw panels for its internal walls, and it’s ironic that in researching the history of the Altona straw houses, my efforts led me back to an advertisement in Earth Garden.

History

Compressed straw panels were invented in France around 1925. Parallel strands of straw are packed tightly and bound with wire into panels of varying sizes, then faced both sides with a cement plaster. In 1936 the first demonstration homes built of straw were constructed at Gepps Cross in Adelaide, using Solomit panels imported from Germany (houses pictured on page 11). Twelve Solomit houses were then built at Port Pirie using materials from the Solomit factory established at Freeling in South Australia. Several Solomit houses were built in New South Wales, including one at Granville in 1946 that was spray-rendered with a cement-mix called ‘Gunite’, and then the Altona houses were proposed in 1939, along with one in the northern Melbourne suburb of Coburg, one near Horsham, and one in western Victoria near Penshurst.

South Australia

According to Bridget Jolly, who completed her PhD on Solomit panels, there are still 12 straw houses standing in South Australia. There are six at Port Pirie, which were built by the Commonwealth Housing Department around 1940, and which have now been brick-veneered, despite being in good condition before the re-cladding. Another two houses are in Snowtown, there are two at Freeling, and there is one at Victor Harbour, Robe, Blackwood, Lochiel, Blyth, Hawker, Loxton, Stirling North, Athelstone, Strathalbyn, and one at Pinaroo. All the houses appear to have steel frames to which the Solomit panels are fixed.

The houses in Altona are in good condition and have been lived in continuously since their construction in 1940. Inset: Barry Hanson, President of the Altona Historical Society, with a section of original Solomit straw panel rendered on both sides with a standard cement render.

Newspaper articlesIn 1939 The Age newspaper had a special weekly section called ‘Building And Architecture’, and in February that year carried the story of the proposed Altona homes. The paper reported that Solomit SA Ltd manufactured compressed straw panels that were 4 foot 10 inches (about 1.5 metres) wide “of varying lengths which, when erected on a steel frame and faced with plaster inside and cement outside make a structure with many of the advantages of concrete. The structure is estimated to be 20 per cent cheaper than brick and, it is claimed, more solid than timber”. The paper also reported that a 13 storey hotel at Antwerp in Belgium was built of the straw panels, but investigation by Bridget Jolly reveals that in fact, the hotel (now a shopping centre) used straw panels only as internal dividing walls.
The Williamstown Advertiser was the weekly newspaper covering Altona when the straw homes were first proposed. The paper reported that the Shire Engineer suggested the builder “erect a proposed show-purpose home at Seaholme with the preparation”. Seaholme was the suburb adjoining Altona, and the first straw home was built there opposite the railway station so that the weekend daytrippers from Melbourne could easily be enticed to sign on the dotted line for a new house similar to the display home.
In the late 1920s another developer, John Wren, had built a series of weatherboard workers’ cottages in the same street in Altona for workers in the local coal mines that supplied Melbourne before the Yallourn Valley coal fields were developed. John Wren was the infamous Melbourne identity who was also the subject of Frank Hardy’s famous novel, Power Without Glory.

Marcus Barlow

The sparkling new straw houses, built in a strip along Maidstone St, Altona, were designed by one of Melbourne’s leading architects, Marcus Barlow. It is a mystery to me why a ‘society’ architect like Barlow, who was educated at Brighton Grammar School and lived in a mansion in Camberwell, concerned himself with straw workers’ cottages in outlying Altona. Barlow designed notable city buildings like the famous Manchester Unity Building on the corner of Swanston and Collins St, Melbourne, the Edments Building in Adelaide, the Victorian Insurance Building in Perth, and many other noteworthy structures.

The display home built opposite the Seaholme railway station.

The builder

Woolcott Forbes is the grand name of the builder of the Altona straw homes. Mrs Thelma Barlow, who has lived in Altona since 1940, and clearly remembers the half-built straw houses when she first arrived, recalls that Woolcott Forbes ran into financial difficulty when building the houses, and may even have ended up in jail for fraud. In any case, the houses were finished by the end of 1940, and today they endure the elements in good condition.

Apex Club demolition

Barry Hanson took me to visit the houses and told me that about ten years ago the local Apex Club agreed to demolish one of the straw houses, as a fundraiser, for a developer who wanted to replace it with units. The club members thought the demolition would be a ‘pushover’, but after much sweating and struggling, they eventually hired a front-end loader to demolish the house: it was too strong.
Barry showed me a section of straw wall panel he salvaged from the demolition, and which now sits at the local museum. The straw panel is tightly compressed and the straw was in perfect condition between the layers of cement render. The render was about 25 to 38 mm (1-1.5 inches) thick on both sides, and the straw panel was about 75 mm (three inches) thick.

House condition

When I looked at the houses I was amazed to find that they had no eaves. Melbourne’s annual rainfall is around 700 mm and these houses have not only stood the test of time, they’ve withstood harsh, wet winters and stinking hot summers. You can’t really tell that the houses are made of straw: they look like any other cement-rendered house of their era.
Some of the houses now have lovely gardens, and at one house a carpenter was replacing a couple of windows. “You should’ve been here half an hour ago,” he said, “I had a bit of the wall exposed — you could see all the straw covered with chicken wire, and a bit of the steel frame”. I could see no evidence of any cracking, movement or structural problems in any of the houses, and the roofs appeared to be straight and true.
It now appears that Australia has a strong piece of history to add to the worldwide straw building tradition. So next time someone asks you if strawbale homes “last”, or if the weather gets to them, tell them about the 60 year old straw houses of Altona — the ones with no eaves.

Next issue: Inside the Altona straw houses.

The author would like to thank the following people for their generous assistance and information for this article: Dr Miles Lewis, Reader in Architecture at the University of Melbourne; Bridget Jolly PhD; Graeme Butler, Heritage Adviser, City of Hobsons Bay; staff of the La Trobe Collection at the State Library of Victoria; Barry Hanson, President of the Altona Historical Society; the staff of Solomit.