Out in Aitkenvale the Planet Homes didn’t offer that opportunity,
Further down the track when I was back in the area and teaching up the road, people wanting to add value and extensions to the family home were enclosing downstairs, adding roller door garages, rumpus rooms and enclosed laundries with, more than likely a downstairs toilet and shower to go with the pool that would, eventually, be going into the back yard.
Wind the clock forward fifty years, head back to the present and head into a newly developed residential area and what do you find?
Low set masonry block or brick veneer homes, sitting squarely on a concrete slab occupied by people who are bitching and moaning about the possible effect on their insurance premiums as they watch the footage of floodwaters running through the Rockhampton suburb of Depot Hill.
What’s interesting, however, is that, in an area that goes under regularly, most of the houses are sitting high and dry above the floodwaters with the occupants still in place and remarking about the efficacy of the trusty walking stick when dealing with brown snakes looking for somewhere dry.
Our tour of suburban Aitkenvale, circa 1963 would have revealed a couple of other interesting aspects. Stand on the old back porch and cast your gaze towards the Ross River and there, on the other side of Leopold Street there’s nothing. Well, not quite nothing. An expanse of guinea grass isn’t exactly nothing, but you catch my drift.
Hop on the trusty treadly and pedal down to Nathan Street and you’ll notice the odd house on the western side of the road, and the odd street heading off in the general direction of the old airstrip that formed the extension of Ross River Road that took you past the one teacher school at The Weir.
Feeling adventurous, and settled firmly in when I come here this was all bush mode, having pedalled down Leopold or Arthur Street your options for further rambling were rather limited. Turn left and at the end of Nathan Street there may have been a track down to the banks of Ross River, but in the early sixties the bridge carrying traffic to Lavarack Barracks, Annandale and JCU was still several years away.
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