The Runcible Architect.: Southwest coast adventure: Day 1.

So Perth doesn't have many old vernacular houses. When I drew my line around the world, I cheated a bit with Perth - my line actually goes through the ocean west of here. But, I wanted one more southern hemisphere site, and, without much prior research, chose Perth. Perth has, in its growth, gotten rid of most of its humble buildings, and I'm just not that interested in the fancy buildings, so I hopped in a car, and here I am on the south coast, in Albany, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in Western Australia.

We stopped in Margaret River, and visited an 1860s homestead, where I discovered a fascinating sandwich wall construction that collapses insulation and structure into one wall panel, using local materials. I'm wondering: where do British settlers learn these techniques? Apparently, the settlers themselves built the houses [there were no trained builders or architects, and the building techniques are pretty different from the local Aboriginal techniques], so I guess now I need to find out where they came from in England, and kind of architectural/cultural influence they had from locals. That would be the historian in me. The architect in me wants to know how/if it performs thermally. And, from my temperature readings I took onsite, it appears to: the inside ambient temperature was 5-8 degrees cooler than the outside ambient temperature.

We visited the beach too - so beautiful! Most of southwest Australia's beaches are in national parks or protected areas, so there is no development and hardly anyone around. [Though that could have more to do with the fact that it's still winter around here...] There are boardwalks or paths that lead to the beaches, but it's mostly vegetation along the shores, and there are no "fake" beaches - so when a patch of sandy beach interrupts the mostly rocky shoreline, it's particularly special. The water is dark, dark blue and freezing - and there are lots of good waves for surfing. So, I guess I'll have to come back in the summertime...

Later, we saw our first kangaroos! They were hopping through a field, and they were too far away to get good pictures of. Plus, my reaction time is a bit slower, driving on the left and all...