YESTERDAY I WATCHED yet another copy-cat or franchise version of a successful tv show. So depressing, as I actually have some knowledge of this particular category.
There was featured the very sad remainder of a typical Queensland colonial house, with insufficient structure to warrant restoration, let alone inappropriate raising on inappropriate 75mmSHS posts.
The poor builder was in a cleft stick; it was a lost cause, and committed to construction. He quite rightly, and perhaps too late, explained that the ‘restoration’ was going to cost three times that of demolition, and a new building project.
The enthusiastic owner, oh dear, was showing a visitor around the initial construction. The visitor, a young woman, represented I believe, the heritage department of the local government. I could be wrong, for I watched in horror the blind leading the blind and had to turn off the tv before I smashed the screen.
The two women wandered around the elevated ruin of a once respectable utilitarian colonial house. Not a wall, a partition, a ceiling or floor remained complete, great sections having been excised or butchered to oblivion.
The critical focus and major architectural brace of the old house was totally missing: the brick chimney, along with its foundation of ashlar, laundry copper hearth, upper kitchen fireplace and range: all gone except the negative evidence of holes in floor and ceiling.
Very sad; an old house can almost be re-built around the chimney-breast with its foundation.
The heritage representative had absolutely nothing to impart, but was led like a lamb. She appeared speechless either through ignorance or fear of the camera. She smiled and offered ludicrous small remarks.
She should have been severe, outraged; her anger at the depredations of multitudes of previous owners obvious. Her presumed but obscured knowledge of colonial architecture and restoration, the point of the entire show and her part in it, offered absolutely nothing: worse, she seemed to condone the proceedings and marvel at the sad and irretrievable ruin.
The builder was quite sensible with his opinion, but way off the true situation. This project and the program it supported, purported to to be a ‘restoration’. No chance. I once heard a bloke say of a clapped-out car, ‘It wouldn’t pull a greasy stick out of a dead dog’s arse’. May as well clad the Taj Mahal in aluminium-styrofoam as restore this place.
Maybe I should have watched the entire show. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.