• Three months after activation, the number of homes connected in Tasmania is 262. Including homes that have requested a service but connecting is pending, it is 436.
• The number of households passed with the fibre is reported between 3000 and 4000 in difference sources. (Note: The source that said "4000" was from The Australian)

• Dial-up internet had been around since 1994;
• In November 1998 (four years later), 13% of households in regional Australia had internet access.

• FTTH over NBN has been around since July 2010;
• In October 2010 (three months later), 10-14% of households in regional Australia had signed up for a service.

Enough about our house.. here are some of the other fantastic houses (and houses-in-progress) that I've found on the HomeOne forum. It’s a great resource if you are building a new house, with dedicated sections for everything to do with building a house - kitchens, bathrooms, heating and cooling, lighting, AV, automation, security, flooring, landscaping ... it’s not even restricted to the work itself, with sections on investment, real estate, being an owner/builder and so on.

People in Glass Houses is Michelle and Tom’s blog. They are nearing the final stages of completion of their architecturally designed 5 bedroom house in a bushland area only 5 mins from Hobart’s CBD! It is a very modern design with lots of angles and designed for a big family similar to ours.

Chris and Kelly’s blog is called Housearama. They have just finished building a passive solar designed 4 bedroom house in Adelaide, roughly based on a Longridge Madison 255. It features a separate home office, a great kitchen (including a professional wok burner – which is a story of its own!) and lots of “cat features”. This is of course on top of all the smart environmental features like retractable shades, opening skylights and power monitoring features.

Building Our 9 Star Home is the blog of Rodney and Elizabeth in Melbourne. Hopefully the key feature of this house is obvious. Their house will actually be ranked as 9.1 star! Not only do they use passive solar design, but they are going to great lengths to ensure the house is as friendly to the environment as possible through choices such as materials used in their kitchen and type of paint used. One of their friends owns the block next door and they will be sharing a backyard for their vege garden and chickens. Construction hasn't started (last I checked), but I think this is going to be a great one to follow!

Big Red's Castle is worth the link just for the amusement of this post!

And last but not least... they don't have a blog that I can link to but sis & bro-in-law Ben and Laura are also planning to build soon, and drawing on Ben's experience in AV & automation they are planning some pretty smart things for their house!  As an example .. they will have an automated watering system for their garden - not that unusual - but the system will take into account time of day, current temperature, recent rainfall, water tank level and weather forecast for the next few days!  So long as it isn't called Skynet ...

As I alluded to in a previous house update, here are some "before and after" plans of some parts of our new house, compared to similar areas in our current place.

Well, it has been quite an eventful few days in the world of Australian politics. Noone really knows who our Prime Minister will be. All the analysts are currently saying that the coalition will have 73 seats to Labor's 72. On first glance this points to a coalition victory, but it isn't as simple as that!

Enter the independents - or more technically correct, the crossbenchers! Three of them - Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott - are sitting independent MPs from regional seats in Queensland and New South Wales who have be re-elected by their elecorate. They are all from rather conservative National Party backgrounds. The other two (Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie - noting Wilkie's position is not confirmed) - are from a different background - both representing urban seats in Melbourne and Hobart, and both from the left side of politics - Bandt being the first Greens representative in the lower house, and Wilkie being a former Green member.

On face value it could be assumed the first three would side with the coalition and the last two with Labor. It is never that simple! After all you would assume that the four independents are no longer members of their party for a reason.

Which brings me to what I personally believe was the only policy in the election that clearly separated the two major parties - telecommunications.

While watching the television coverage over the weekend, as expected there were live crosses all over the nation including the three conservative members. And a picture spoke a thousand words - or rather, no picture. The live crosses were just a still image with audio provided by a grainy mobile phone call. Even though the members pointed out that telecommunications was a big issue in their electorate, the fact that the current situation was being clearly demonstrated only served to reinforce this!

The Greens and Wilkie also ran on a platform of supporting the National Broadband Network so it could be assumed they would side with Labor in this regard - not to mention the fact that the Greens and Liberals are polar opposite ends of the spectrum.

The other factor that gives hope to Labor is that the crossbenchers have indicated that they want to support a stable government. It is not in their interest to see the country go to another election in six months time. These comments have made specific reference to the Senate. After the massive surge to the Greens - their number of Senators will increase from 4 to 9 - perhaps the independents think that a conservative government would not work with a left leaning upper house? It is worth mentioning that the Senate does not change until 1 July 2011. Until then, a Labor Government will need the approval of either the Coalition, or all Greens senators, Family First senator Steve Fielding, and Independent Nick Xenaphon, to pass legislation. After the new senate term starts, only the Greens will need to be appeased. Probably not an issue for a Labor government but it could be a challenge should the Liberals form government.

(As I write this, news has come to light that Wilkie may be not as likely to win Denison as first thought. If it did go Labors way, it may put it at 73-73 for the major parties. That's probably a sign that I should stop writing this, every few hours there is something new!)

It's been a long time since the last update, but plenty has been happening!  I just haven't kept the blog updated... here is a roundup of the last few months ... and this post will be light on text, high on pictures!

At our May architect meeting, we saw a cardboard model of the house!

If you are wondering what sort of material the black sections of the external facade will be, it is something called Alucobond - I hadn't heard of it until the architect mentioned it!  It is a type of aluminium cladding ... I found some images of it used in a residential environment, reproduced from here (click link for bigger images):




It is long lasting and very low maintenance - basically needs cleaning once every ten years - which is great for people who are, lets say, home maintenance challenged such as ourselves!

Our plans are currently with the Hobart City Council and were advertised publicly on July 21st!



The public review period has ended and I don't know if the council received any submissions, but we did receive one call from a neighbour - saying that if we had any clean fill to get rid of, we are more than welcome to have it dumped on his block!

Last of all, I have been playing with Google Sketchup (which incidentally runs quite well under WINE) to design some of the joinery areas.  The most complete one so far is the kitchen:

Of course, it sounds like a pretty extreme proposal - and didn't the rabid hordes let everyone know! Complaints about "taxpayers are funding these nutters!" (even though they aren't) and "who's gonna pay for this little dream-up?". One particular comment amused me "oil will be of such dwindling availability and so expensive that only the super-rich will be able to afford to drive over it. " Apparently someone thinks we will still be driving petrol-powered cars in 50 years time?

One person seemed to be rather displeased with the suggestion when he suggested that "These people will destroy Tasmania!"

It's quite obvious that no-one looked at the design in context. It is an entrant in the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale - an international architecture exhibition. Entrants have been asked to explore possibilities for urban developments 50-100 years in the future. Room 11's entry, Island Proposition 2100, sets out a design which answers the question - "If, in the face of climate change, Tasmania had to accept 5 million eco-refugees, how would they do it?"


The bridge is only one part of this proposal - obviously the Mercury used it as a headline grabber - but it doesn't give credit to the rest of the design. The basis of it is a high-density, urbanised spine running from Hobart, through the Midlands, Launceston, Devonport, Burnie, through to Smithton - and then continuing on in the form of a bridge to King Island and Victoria. This "spine" would contain infrastructure such as high speed (maglev) rail as well as energy generation (wind and solar) and grey water processing.

All these details are available by simply reading the website - obviously many of the comment writers are incapable of doing so!

Tasmania's small, decentralised population and physical separation are the root of so many issues in the state - here is a concept which would solve all of them in one go! And it is just that, a concept. It is designed to make us open our eyes and look at things from a different perspective. But we could never have that in Tasmania - the "can't do" state - could we?

Do not have fur, they need contact with other humans for warmth.

They can't walk or run away from predators. They don't camouflage too well either.

They can't find their own food.

They have high energy requirements but a small stomach, so need to feed frequently.

Are rather a lot like Australian marsupial babies, being born helpless and needing to be close to their parents well into toddlerhood. We could learn a lot from koalas and kangaroos.