Building the model

Darren had been working on the paper plans for a couple of weeks as we travelled Queensland. It had begun to get ‘sticky’ so we started heading south to New South Wales. On the way he decided we needed to build a model to make sure the gables and entrance worked.

We picked up a couple of packs of popsticks and superglue, got some cardboard from the little shop at Teresa Creek Dam near Clermont and headed south. The location tags on our pictures tell a story of stopping on the side of highways to work on the project – Bruce Highway, Gregory Highway, Arcadia Valley until we parked up in Culgoa National Park on the NSW side for a week. The most draught devastated park you can imagine in the middle of nowhere. A Bungarra would wander through each day looking for the slim pickings that perhaps we had left. There were few birds as there was no water anywhere, goodness knows what the flies were breeding in.

We set up the caravan with the mesh room and started in earnest. Darren concentrated on exacting the roof structure including bird mouths on the rafter ends. I helped by sticking together popstick rafters as straight as possible (straight popsticks are not as easy to find as you may think), I also made the strawbale thick walls from cardboard and the furniture, kitchen and front door (which is still a work in progress in my head).

The model did show up an area of roof that would have been unsupported which was easily fixed on the plans and model.  Also a need for another window in the bathroom.

Once the model was finished and adoringly ogled for a day it was cling wrapped and stored under the bed for the (maybe 8,000km) journey home which it made without a break!

It has been an invaluable asset to the final planning stage, taking pride of place beside Darren as he drafted in Librecad.