The Avoca Project

The Swiss House, a poetic image of adaptabilty

A day of discussions, demonstrations and presentations by experts in the field including special guest Peter Andrews, Natural Sequence farmer and author of “Back from the Brink”, as seen on ABC TV’s Australian Story. Using this site as a practical example, invited experts will address issues of water such as usage and methods of saving and recuperation, like storage, irrigation for gardens, use of grey water, wetlands development and the relationship with the river. Other issues of sustainability will also be addressed, including reductions in domestic power use. Discussions will focus on the future of this heritage house and grounds as an artwork – a poetic image of adaptability to climate change.

Cost of entry

The carbon footprint of each visitor’s journey to Avoca will be neutralised by the purchase of seedling trees to be immediately planted in the garden (maximum cost $20)

Address

16 Dundas Street, Avoca Victoria 3467.

The Avoca Project is proudly supported by Federal Community Grants, Arts Victoria. RMIT University.

Download Field Day flyer [PDF 89KB]

Schedule

From 9.30am

On arrival – participant tree plantings and sign up for tours, Stories, registration of interest in Avoca Landcare group, dinner bookings

From 10.00

Guided tours of the house and grounds (from the front gate) every hour Collecting of stories about the house

Rose Mann will be inviting people who have stories about the house to have them recorded in the dining room over a cup of tea.

Morning program:

Adapting to climate change: A more sustainable future. All presentations to start in the studio.

10.00- 10.30 Simon Pockley (the water solutions, the federal Water Fund grant and the innovative underground water tank now in place).
10.30- 11.00 Mel Ogden ( the landscaping solutions underway)
11.00- 11.30 Lorraine Huddle (the house’s observable heritage)
11.30 – 1.00 A discussion on sustainable renovation in the studio, with Ralph Horne, Tony Dalton, Ron Wakefield, Lorraine Huddle. Chair: Lisette Ashford
or
11.30 – 1.00 Water and the vegetable garden – a demonstration of the best use of drip irrigation.

Afternoon program:

1.30 – 2.00 Lyndal Jones (So what makes this art? The role of art and the future of this project) in the studio. Chair: Jeanette Horsley
2.00 – 4.00 Peter Andrews (water, soil and the river) with introduction by the Mayor). This presentation will start in the studio but may move to the river or other parts of the property. Chair: John Kirkpatrick
4.00- 5.00 Pamela Manning – indigenous plantings and the wetland. At the small red tent in the garden.
5.00- 6.00 300 naked ladies; a small garden performance
6.30 dinner at the wine bar (dinner $40.00)
Morning and afternoon tea will be available and a glass of wine at the end of the day. Lunch is available in the main street or you can bring a picnic.

Wednesday 31st Jan

Although the lower verandah looks serviceable, the treated pine joists supporting the pine tongue and groove flooring have been let-in to the bearers because the stumps were positioned too high. This has left about 50mm of support.

While it may be enough for low-level ground level use, it is inadequate for the first floor or for supporting the weight of the verandah posts and the rest of the first floor structure.

After digging holes for new stumps aligned with the posts I noticed that the existing stumps were put in very haphazardly.

Decision: Remove the ground floor verandah and start again with a view to either removing the existing stumps or cutting them down 50mm so that proper joists can be used to support the verandah.

Found that the pine floor boards had been attached with screw-down nails making it very difficult to save much. The treated pine joists were 2nd hand.

Demolished protruding and unsupported skillion roof and found plate to be OK. Supported it with a prop.

Began removing facia to discover similar let-in and 2nd hand construction of first floor. There is much more dry rot and white ant damage hidden beneath the fascia.

Decision: Demolish entire verandah and start afresh. There is nothing to be gained by propping up the first floor and then removing it afterwards. It would not be cost effective to keep it because it would slow the construction process up and probably be very dangerous.

The first floor verandah roof has been bolted together and is screwed down at the eaves making it impossible to detach from below. The eaves are about 6.5m off the ground. My ladder extends to about 6.2m.

Ladder saga:

Asked at the garage for who might have a high ladder. Found Pyranees View Hire just our of town down a dirt road. No ladders. They suggested Maryborough Hire. Drove to Maryborough to find that ladders were no longer hired because of the 2m rule (no one should go more than 2m up a ladder). Checked at both hardware stores to find only short ladders. However, noticed a large ladder leaning against the shed wall. Turned out that it belonged to Bill the electrician. Rang Bill who was happy to hire it out to me for the afternoon and very trusting.

On return to Avoca found that it stretched about 6.4m. Backed up the ute and got Rose to hold the base secure while I ground off enough of the eave screws to allow me to work from below. Quite scary.

The roof had not only been bolted together and screwed down but each sheet had also been nailed down in the valleys beneath the lead flashing. This made it very awkward to remove. The lead flashing was so heavy that it sat in place by gravity.

Even more scary wrestling with the sheets while standing on the top of a fold out ladder on rotten joists. Seems to me that there must be some extended joists running out from the house that are holding up the first floor. Otherwise it should have collapsed.

Thursday 1st Feb

Yikes! Removed the rest of the front fascia to find that the top plate had been completely eaten out by white ants and that the places where the plate rested on the treated pine posts was also rotten.

Made piles of concrete blocks to support Acrow props and raised a 6m length of hardwood with ropes so that the load would be distributed.

Finished removing the first floor roof. The posts were set into mortices in the top plate which was mainly sound except for the ends which were rotten and split. The northern plate came off OK but the southern plate was difficult and although rotten I had to cut it to get it off. Needed Rose to hold it while I cut it through.

This left the long plate. I was able to prize it off the tenons but neither of us wanted to chance trying to lift it off when it was so heavy and there was nothing to stand on.

We imagined a sky hook and in no time at all had worked out a way that we could attach the shower pulleys to a ladder section supported by a rope tensioned off a beam in the doorway. It worked like a charm and we were able to lift the entire plate into the air and then lower it down onto the first floor. It was then fairly simple to remove the balustrading as the post were flopping around.

To celebrate, we left for a pub dinner about 8:15pm and heard a crash. One of the treated pine posts now relieved of the weight of the balustrading had fallen out. No damage and the Acrows held.

Friday 2nd Feb

Removed the Baltic pine first floor, took down all the posts and began working through the protruding first floor joists and bearers. Each one has its own story and need to be assessed on its merits.

Left the Acrows in place rather than disturb the supporting structure.

When Rose left, I cleaned up and worked on the fireplace brickwork in the back room.

19th February 2007

Removed remaining timbers from first floor and noticed how individual joists had been numbered.

Then cut down all the stumps by 40mm so that there would be room on the bearers for 100mm joists and proper support for the posts.

22nd February 2007

Simon Hutchinson arrived to help and we quickly discovered an excellent working partnership. First we set up a solid bed of joists

and then began preparing the ground floor posts.

Simon working on ground floor posts

23rd February 2007

Standing up and bracing the first post (Simon and Jack)

Simon with the first two posts and bracing

attaching the centre posts to the top plate

25th February 2007

Ground floor posts attached with first floor joists

Simon preparing first floor posts

first floor flooring gives us something to stand on

Smoko: L-R Jeff , Mel, Matt, Roy,Tricia, Wayne, Simon

Simon Pockley

Watford House, known locally as ‘the Swiss house’ was built in the 1850s, it was imported from Switzerland, with every piece numbered. It was originally erected in High Street next to the Avoca Hotel. In the 1870s it was moved on red gum rollers down to its present site near the Avoca River flood plain where it can be seen today amongst ancient River Red Gums. Nearby trees show evidence of Aboriginal occupation.

The house is regarded as a landmark and know locally as ‘The Swiss House’. Over the years it has had has numerous owners and become quite run down.

Recenty the property was acquired by one of Australia’s leading visual artists, Lyndal Jones. Lyndal is Associate Professor of Multimedia in the School of Creative Media at the University of RMIT. She is turning the house and grounds into a (not for profit) Arts Project.

The Avoca Project

The Avoca Project is multifaceted: not only will the property the focus of arts based activities and research in the district but it will also act as an indicator for the impact of the arts on a rural coummunity. It will provide a high profile model for the exhibition of innovative solutions to some of the problems facing rural communities.

Research into the ‘migrant’ history of the house will form the basis of this image of adaptability and incorporation of a range of power and water-saving and re-cycling strategies in the house and grounds (with artworks forming indicators of use) will create a model of sustainability in the increasingly arid environment of a town whose reservoir is now empty, its water supply now only saline bore water.

Watford house is an important historical landmark in Avoca. Any changes in the house are strongly registed in the township and any art exhibitions or activities that bring people to the town also bring necessary financial support and publicity and cultural opportunity.

To this end, the individual and collaborative artworks undertaken by Lyndal Jones and others will be supported by an ongoing residential program of artists also engaged in process oriented, relational aesthetics projects and/or environmental artworks.

The project operates through The Watford House Association, a not-for-profit organisation (currently being set up by solicitor Mr John Howie.

Sustainability and water saving

The application for a Community Water Grant is being developed with the primary aim of sustainability and water saving.

Although the Avoca has a substantial 6900 square kilometres catchment area (the fifth largest in Victoria), most of that area is on the northern plains where rainfall averages only about 350 mm per year, and where there is little runoff as the terrain is very flat. Most of the water flowing in the Avoca originates in the narrow upper portion of the catchment area, where rainfall averages about 600 mm per year, most of it falling in the winter and spring.

Of all the Victorian rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin, the Avoca is the most variable. In theory, the average annual flow is 85,000 ml, however recorded actual flows have varied from almost five times the average figure in very wet years to 0.5% of the average in drought years. It is normal for the Avoca to stop flowing for weeks or months at a time during summer and autumn.

Although it is the only river of significance in the area, the Avoca has had no major water storages constructed on it, merely six weirs of only local significance.

Avoca is typical of many central Victorian towns in that has a severe water shortage. The township has storage of 90 megalitres that is currently at less than 18.7% capacity with Permanent water saving rules and emergency bore water. However the bore water is highly saline and unsuitable for reuse.

Site plan

The aim of this whole-of-system project will be to:

• retrofit Watford House with water saving appliances
• collect, filter and store sufficient rainwater
• reuse and recycle grey water in innovative ways
• replace saline sewage with (non saline) waste that will become available for reuse
• establish wetlands and contour the property so that is water efficient when dry and flood-proof when the river is in flood
• revegetate the property (adjacent the riparian rehabilitation of the Avoca River) with indigenous planting

Project promotion and public exposure

In addition, the project will be publicised through internationally advertised public exhibitions of art works based on these initiatives (funded by Arts Victoria). It will be promoted through the web, education programs, seminars, community workshops, and site tours.

It is envisaged that exhibitions, readings and talks will be held in an ongoing program of works by Lyndal Jones and other visual artists, writers and performers who will be invited to stay at the house in an ongoing series of residencies.

The project will also host a series of local, national and international meetings and discussion groups on climate change in conjunction with RMIT university and local groups.

The first projects (funded by Arts Victoria) will involve a series of residencies and discussion groups with sustainability experts including Professor Wim Halfkamp an ecological economist from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Dr Ralph Horne, Director of Design Research and an international expert in housing retrofitting, Dr Simon Pockley, information architect, Ms Mel Ogden, land-artist, Ms Pamela Manning Landcare Co-ordinator, North Central Catchment Management Authority and Lyndal Jones. The project will be documented for television by Mr Ben Speth, cinematographer.

Project experts

The project is deeply anchored in both the local community and in the education sector:

Associate Professor Lyndal Jones

Melbourne-based Lyndal Jones is widely recognised as one of Australia’s foremost multidisciplinary artists. Best known for her conceptual works she has produced performance works, installations, site specific video works and permutations of all three since the early 1970′s. Having exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, she was selected to represent Australia at the prestigious Venice Biennale 2001. Her work has also appeared in other important exhibitions including: the Kwangu Biennale, Korea, 1997, the Melbourne International Biennale, 1999; Perspecta, AGNSW, 1997; and the Biennale of Sydney, 1996. In recent years she has been Artist in Residence at ARTEC, London (1999-2000); an Art Fellow in Media at the University of Paisley, Scotland (1997/8); and received the prized Australian Artists Creative Fellowship (1992-1996).

Prof. dr. Wim Hafkamp

Wim Hafkamp is an environmental economist, on sabattical at RMIT, after 4 years as dean of the faculty of social sciences at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Until 2000 he headed up the Erasmus Center for Sustainability and Management, part of the same faculty. Before that he worked at various universities in The Netherlands, and in KPMG’s environmental consulting group.

His research interests include corporate environmental management, environmental policy at the government-industry interface. While at RMIT he will focus on issues of transport, infrastructure, urban development and environment.

In Rotterdam, Wim takes a particular interest in the interface between art and sustainability. He was active in several projects, one of which included artists in the Rotterdam Mobility Conference and another one of which centred around art and water management on a derelict piece of land underneath a highway overpass.

Dr Nigel Helyer

Nigel Helyer was born in Aldershot, England, in 1951 and settled permanently in Australia in 1983. Helyer has held many solo exhibitions, most recently including NoiseFloor, Stanford University Art Gallery, United States (2003) and Metamorphoses II, AGNSW, Sydney (2000). His work has been exhibited in major survey exhibitions, including the Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth (2002 and 2004); Contempora 5, NGV, Melbourne (1997); Sound in space, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1997); and the Australian Sculpture Triennial, Melbourne (1984). Helyer has received the Australia Council Visual Arts/Craft Board Fellowship in 1992 and 2002, and a Pollock–Krasner Foundation Award in 2002. In 2002 he won the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award. Helyer has undertaken numerous residencies, including the Australia Council New York studio residency in 1988. From 1985 to 1999 he was Head of Sculpture at SCA and from 2000 to 2003 was a member of the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council. Nigel Helyer lives and works in Sydney.

Dr Ralph Horne Director, Centre for Design School of Architecture and Design RMIT University

With a research career spanning 15 years in environmental assessment, Dr Horne has also developed a research interest in processes around sustainability. His doctoral study included substantial research on human values in environmental evaluation processes, and since then, successive research projects he has developed have allowed him to take this interest further. He is currently developing and undertaking studies involving human behaviour responses and community capacity building mechanisms in the transition towards carbon neutrality.

Jeanette Horsley

Jeanette Horsley is an emerging leader in regional tourism. Her strengths in benchmarking local and regional visitor services, innovative industry development and equipping and encouraging operators, fuels Jeanette’s vision for growing regional tourism.

Currently the Tourism and Economic Development Manager with Pyrenees Shire Council, Jeanette was previously Visitor Services Manager for Ballarat Tourism, Jeanette Horsley was pivotal in establishing the Accommodation and Booking Service for the Ballarat Visitor Information Centre.

Jeanette brings 28 years of strategic and operational experience in both the hospitality and tourism industries. Jeanette plays a strong facilitating role in cross regional promotional activities as a current and founding committee member of the Great Grape Road Inc. Committee and the development of the Great Southern Touring Route Central Reservation Service.Jeanette brings 28 years of strategic and operational experience in both the hospitality and tourism industries.

Jeanette plays a strong facilitating role in cross regional promotional activities as a current and founding committee member of the Great Grape Road Inc. Committee and the development of the Great Southern Touring Route Central Reservation Service.

Land Artist Mel Ogden

text to be added

Dr Simon Pockley

Simon Pockley has been managing digital collections for more than 10 years. He writes, speaks about, and teaches information management. He has been an active in the development of metadata standards and was the Collections Manager for the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI), and Repository Manager for Deakin University. He was a contributor to the UNESCO guide to Digital Preservation and the UNESCO Guide to Electronic Theses and Dissertations. He is a preservation advisor to the National Library of Australia and a member of the Victorian Government Committee of Experts. He is currently a consultant to several private and public institutions and working on two innovative information visualisation projects involving Landcare.

Ben Speth

Ben Speth lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Speth worked as a painter, cinematographer and filmmaker in NYC before moving to Melbourne in 2000. His first feature film, dresden (1999) was licensed by the Showtime Network and was shown at the Sundance, Belfort, Mar del Plata, New York Underground and Brisbane Film Festivals, among others. In 2002 he was commissioned by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image to make a silent work entitled dummy. His second feature film, Forever, was part of the ACMI/NGV show 2004: A Survey of Recent Australian Visual Culture. He continues to work with artists, architects, designers, dance and theatre companies.

• grey dots are trees
• double perimeter lines are corrugated iron
• broken lines proposed vegetable garden

Composting toilet options

• Nature Loo approved for Victoria and is Australian Standards 1546.2 certified. Requires 1m underfloor clearance.
  Included in the standard Classic 1000 – 3 Package:
  • Ceramic warm white pedestal and timber seat.
  • 3 composting chambers (85 cm high x 80 cm maximum diameter).
  • Waste connecting chute (70 cm in length – can be cut by you to suit your requirements).
  • Ventilation system including 12 volt air fan and transformer.
  • Easy to follow installation and maintenance manual.
  • Trolley

  Price : $2,800 ex-Brisbane factory or $2650 without trolley

• Rota Loo approved by councils throughout Australia. The Rota-Loo is a non-flush compost toilet system developed in Australia, using an aerobic system, with rotating bins under the seat that can be easily removed. The liquid is evaporated through the heat generated by the sun absorbed on the back section of the toilet structure.
  Rota-Loo 950 with compost toilet, fibreglass pedestal, 90 cm waste chute, 240 Volt extractor fan, Wind driven turbo vent, PVC elbows, liquid level indicator and Bio stimulant. $3907.90
• The Clivus system is based on a ‘continuous’ composting process in one large chamber, as against multiple smaller chambers that require a restart of the process after emptying. As the organic material decomposes it will reduce in volume by up to 90%. The compost pile is therefore always ‘shrinking in the middle’ whilst new material is being added to the top, and finished compost is removed from the bottom of the pile when appropriate.
  Models suited for regular use start around $1650 for small residential Ecolet units, and range from around $3000 to over $8000 for our larger Clivus Multrumâ„¢ household and commercial units. (Delivery and installation not included)

Overview of the catchment

The Pyrenees Shire is an extremely productive agricultural region covering an area of 3,500 square kilometres. The Shire takes its name from the ranges in the north named by Major Mitchell in 1836 as they reminded him of the Pyrenees in Europe.

It is renowned for its cereal and hay crops, wool, viticultural and forestry activity. Thirty percent of the work force is involved in agriculture, which produces commodities with a gross value in the range of $70m each year.

Most of the Pyrenees residents live in the two major towns of Avoca (1,000) and Beaufort (1,200). Both towns were established on gold but have reverted to service centres for the agricultural community. A number of smaller towns are dotted throughout the Shire all contributing to the wellbeing of the region.

Although the Avoca has a substantial 6900 square kilometres catchment area (the fifth largest in Victoria), most of that area is on the northern plains where rainfall averages only about 350 mm per year, and where there is little runoff as the terrain is very flat. Most of the water flowing in the Avoca originates in the narrow upper portion of the catchment area, where rainfall averages about 600 mm per year, most of it falling in the winter and spring.

Of all the Victorian rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin, the Avoca is the most variable. In theory, the average annual flow is 85,000 ml, however recorded actual flows have varied from almost five times the average figure in very wet years to 0.5% of the average in drought years. It is normal for the Avoca to stop flowing for weeks or months at a time during summer and autumn.

Although it is the only river of significance in the area, the Avoca has had no major water storages constructed on it, merely six weirs of only local significance.

It is little used for irrigation as during the peak demand period (summer and autumn) it is often not flowing at all. During low flow periods Avoca River water is usually too saline to water crops with, but can still provide drinking water for sheep and cattle.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoca_River

Salinity

The consequences of salinisation and rising saline watertables include:

• declining river water quality,
• loss of productive land,
• damage to roads and buildings,
• damage to conservation reserves and remnant vegetation, and
• increased flood risk.

Dryland salinity was first reported in Victoria in 1853 and irrigation salinity was noticed in the Kerang region in Victoria in the 1890s. The national increase in human induced salinity from 1982 to 1989 was 9 per cent per annum.

The desirable salinity limit for drinking water is 800 electrical conductivity units (EC). Within 20 years salinity levels of the Murray River at Morgan are predicted to exceed 800 EC 40 per cent of the time. Sixty per cent of this increase will be due to dryland sources (one quarter from outside the Mallee region).

In Victoria, the Avoca and Loddon Rivers already record salinities above 800 EC on a flow weighted basis and these could rise significantly by 2050.

Source: Research Note 22 1999-2000 Salt of the Basin-’Business as Usual’ is not a Viable Option by Bill McCormick Science, Technology, Environment and Resources Group 14 December 1999 http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RN/1999-2000/2000rn22.htm

Potential partners and local contacts

Press release: 15 July 2002 New Radar to Monitor Northeast Victoria’s Weather

Orchardists, farmers, tourists and the wider community will have access to the latest in weather technology following the unveiling today at Yarrawonga of a new radar by, Dr Sharman Stone, Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment and Heritage.

Dr Stone also presented Rainfall Excellence Awards to three families who have provided the Bureau with daily rainfall records for over 100 years. Mr Maurice Bandt of Redbank, 17km northwest of Avoca, accepted an award on behalf of the Bandt family who have provided rainfall data since 1897.

source: http://www.deh.gov.au/minister/ps/2002/psmr15july02.html

The National Action Plan (NAP) for Salinity and Water Quality identified 21 priority regions throughout Australia for addressing salinity and water quality. In Victoria, 94% of all area showing signs of salinity is located in NAP regions. 19% of farms in the Avoca-Loddon-Campaspe region showed signs of salinity (477 farms).

http://www.napswq.gov.au/about-nap.html

source http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/nsf/abs@.mediareleasesbyReleaseDate/ABF093CD7DE9D979CA256CD3007E01F7?OpenDocument

Rainfall trends

Avoca rainfall average 500mm (16inches) per year (source: Neville Colliier)

Neville Collier (plumber) has recommends 90,000 litres (20,000 gallons) based on projected demand

The average family house in Victoria uses 240,000 litres of water per annum.

Calculator:
http://www.polyworld.com.au/calculations.htm

Assumptions:

Roof area: 250sqm

Rainfall: 500mm

Max water collected annually: 125,000 litres

Avoca township has storage of 90 megalitres that is currently at 18.7% capacity with Permanent water saving rules.

Victoria is becoming progressively drier with up to 3 mm less rainfall per year.

Figures and graphs for Ballarat are available: Ballarat has now experienced its 9th consecutive year of below average rainfall, which according to rainfall records, is unprecedented. Ballarat’s rainfall year to date (YTD) is 283mm compared to the long term average of 388.7mm or 72% of average rainfall.

Source: Steven Carter – Central Highlands Water http://www.chw.net.au/water_storage.html

Steven Carter thinks that Brendan Clark (The Demand Managemnt Officer 53203264 would be interested in the project. He is also going to contact Don Rickerby about rainfall figures.

Ballarat figures accord with accepted trend of 33% less rainfall by 2035

Water savng targets are: 25% by 2015 and 30% by 2020

The Swiss House was built in the 1850s, it was imported from Europe perhps Switzerland, perhaps Germany, with every piece numbered. It was originally erected in High Street next to the Avoca Hotel. In 1870, it was moved on red gum rollers by bullocks down to its present site near the river.

Photograph by John T. Collins 1907-2001

Photograph by John T. Collins 1907-2001