John Ellway’s Cascade House in Paddington. The house extends a 1900s cottage down a hillside to create a place to gather for meals, games, and to connect with green spaces. Credit: Toby Scott
Tim Ross has nothing against houses. He loves them. He’s especially enamoured with classic Queenslanders and the way local architects have given them new life.
But he would like Aussies to let go of their attachment to the notion of the suburban quarter-acre block with a swimming pool and a Hills Hoist.
“The ‘Australian dream’ was drummed into us in the post-war period,” he says. “Essentially, it was about control – the idea was that if you give a man a mower and a mortgage, you won’t end up with a communist.
“The world has moved on, a million different ways, but many of us are still clinging on to that idea without really knowing why.”
“I fell in love with Brisbane through the architecture.” Tim Ross is presenting a new show, The Australian Dream?, at the State Library of Queensland.Credit: Caroline McCredie
Eighteen months of research at state libraries have gone into Ross’ new live show.
A nostalgic journey featuring a wealth of historical images and footage, The Australian Dream? asks tough questions about the future of affordable and sustainable housing.
“I can’t see an Australia where [houses are] ever going to be affordable again,” he says. But don’t despair. “Looking back, yes, things were certainly more affordable, but were they better?
“My parents might have been able to buy a house quite cheaply in the 1960s, but it was riddled with asbestos, and the coldest house I’ve ever lived in. We’d have a possum dying every six months in the water tank.
Brisbane has a number of house designs particular to the city, such as this one in Acacia Ridge. Credit: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland
“It didn’t mean we weren’t happy. But the houses were pretty primitive, and they were pretty small.”
Ross grew up on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, son of a doctor and an antiques seller, and studied arts at La Trobe University.
An aspiring actor and the frontman of a band called Black Rose, he fell into comedy after meeting Merrick Watts at a gig.
He has come a long way since the radio days of Merrick and Rosso on Triple J and Nova 96.9, and is better known now for his documentaries, books and social posts about design and architecture.
In 2019, the Australian Institute of Architects awarded him the National President’s Prize “for his advocacy, activism and outstanding contribution to the architecture profession”.
His new show mines past, present and future to explore alternative ways of living.
Ross cites Winter Park, a 1970s cluster housing development in the Melbourne suburb of Doncaster, as a place that nurtures a sense of community and a respect for landscape.
“There’s a house called the Beachcomber designed by Nino Sydney in the early 1960s, a house on stilts that you could buy for the price of two cars.
“Those are ideas from the past that we could still learn from today.”
The show’s national tour gives Ross a welcome chance to reconnect with Brisbane’s built environment. “I fell in love with Brisbane through the architecture,” he says.
The Cascade House’s verandah roof extends over cascading split levels, offering protection from western sun.Credit: Toby Scott
He enthuses about local architects Richards & Spence (The Calile), Vokes and Peters (Victoria Park/Barrambin Shelters) and Paul Owen (Camp Hill Cottage). Asked to name a favourite house, however, he namechecks John Ellway.
“Ellway designed this wonderful house, the Cascade House in Paddington, and it’s a 1900s timber cottage that had been slightly extended down a hill to create a new room. It shows you how to live in a house that’s 125 years old, but feels incredibly new as well.”
Rosso encountered the house when co-adjudicating the Houses Awards 2022. “We’d been judging all these houses in the middle of the grey Melbourne winter, and then Brisbane had sunshine to burn. It’s so green and so lush and so delightful, they couldn’t get us out of the house. It was like thawing out our souls.”
“I can drive around the streets of Brisbane and the architecture just makes me swoon because it is so different, and it is intrinsically yours.”
Tim Ross
The presentation has Ross asking us to make peace with what he calls the “other Australian dream” – apartment living.
Completed in 1960, Torbreck in Highgate Hill was the first mixed use, residential apartment block built in Queensland.Credit: Courtney Kruk
“Apartment living is very much here to stay, but it was not always looked on particularly favourably in this country. There’s all sorts of places where I think we’re doing it really well, and the standard of living is extraordinary.
“I think it’s far more appealing for people than being stuck out 50 kilometres from the city just so you can have somewhere to put your Hills Hoist. I think that’s absurd.”
Ross is a fan of Torbreck, the massive apartment block that has overlooked Brisbane from the top of Highgate Hill since 1960.
“That’s a great example of something that works as well today, if not better, than it did when it opened, and people love it. Those apartments in many ways are better than a lot of apartments [built] today.”
Tim Ross presents The Australian Dream? at the State Library of Queensland on Friday February 14, 6.30pm and Saturday, February 15, 6pm, $49.