foundations

These are the ather unspectacular remnants of what was a remarkable house built in the early 1960s by Wallace Greenham in Whistle Pipe Gully, a few kms from home.

Incorporating the granite boulders as walls of the house, he built these platforms on one side of the year round creek and a cave like structure on the other, joined across the creek by a series of bridges and walkways.
The idea, to design a house that 'was completely integrated with the site' and a clamber around discovers remnants of stone walls abutting the smooth granite boulders and broken tiles from what was probably the bathroom.

Central to all of this is the creek itself which tumbles across smooth, lichened rock, waterfalling between the steep gully sides. Wallace harnessed this power using a Penton wheel (designed by him)to provide the house with power.
It must have been a magical place, with descriptions of inward sloping roofs centred on a fish pool and trees growing up through the floor of the suspended walkway and roof.
Sadly, only these foundations remain as the Regional Planning Authority acquired the land and house and by 1981 it had been 'surreptitiously' demolished.

He went on to design and build other houses, one near Albany which sounds equally magical with seven tubes radiating from a glass dome, each tube with its own living function and the indoor garden in the dome acting as the main circulation space for the building.

The architects of 'Organic Architecture' include the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff and Wallace Greenhams's name appears amongst them.

And all this, literally just down the road.