The House of My Dreams

“ Native Australian hardwood is so beautiful and strong and enduring that it’s impossible for me not to see it as metaphor.”

We live in a very old house. It’s a beautiful house, the house of my dreams and of a lifetime spent dreaming of old houses. In 1888 this house was built on Wurundjeri land. Some 50 years earlier, the land it stands on had been tricked out of local elders through a bogus treaty made with a British businessman, which was invalidated shortly afterwards. This small piece of Australian earth was, like the rest of the country, never sold, never given, never ceded, but eventually the clay soil was carved into anyway and the foundations were laid for my