WELCOME TO AFFORDABLE RENTALS BRISBANE

YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. In this blog we will write articles about the Social Security System and those issues, that affects people that rent, and also those that own properties for rent. We hope that our articles will help them understand the situation better. L S H.

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Farming today compared to the old ways.

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, YOU ARE INVITED. IN THIS BLOG, WE WILL DISCUSS RENTAL PROBLEMS THAT WE MAY INCOUNTER WHEN RENTING, AND THE PROBLEMS OF RUNNING AFFORDABLE RENTALS. WE ARE DOING THIS, IN THE HOPE THAT OUR ARTICLES WILL HELP PEOPLE UNDERSTAN THE SITUATION BETTER. 
This article can also be found at this link, Farming today compared to the old way


In this article, we are comparing today farming life, with old time farming. So, let us start with this photo above, where is a show off of Harvester machine and how harvesting is done today. But we have to say that this photo is just an exaggeration, because it is too crowded with machines. Anyhow, wheat harvesting was a lot harder in the past. Also life was harder then. 
 

Welcome to our article, Farming today compared to the old way

Dear readers, we are writing about social issues that effect our way of life, and this is blog No: 1. 

Wheat farming the modern way. 

Now, let me explain, this article is an old article that was published the first time in 2012 in Hub Pages. So, you may find that a few things have changes since then. Anyhow, we will be posting several articles in the future to compare social issues, that can be negative or positive, and you can come back to this article to compare. 

Having said that let us see what I wrote then. 

Anyhow, today I want to talk about farming today compared to the old ways, because I can mentally see the great difference that it has made in our standard of living. So, I believe that today we are better off than we were before; but let me see how I can describe this difference. Anyhow, I am writing about my life story, so, I mentally compare the ways of life of today to the ways of life in the past when I was young; for this reason, I have become aware that there is a great difference; in fact, the difference is so great that it is worth writing an entire article to explain my personal point of view.

Anyhow, we must acknowledge that this modern wheat farming in Australia, and in other parts of the world, it has slashed the present cost of living a lot, and this helps us to live a better life. We believe that this has happened because of the new farming machines available to the farmers, and the fertilises available to them; so, farmers are able to produce wheat and other produce a lot cheaper than in the past, so, food has become cheaper, therefore, we are better off today in many ways.

In this article, we invite our readers to compare how different farming and farming life was at the time when I was young in the fifties, and, how hard was life then because most of us had to work hard just to earn enough to feed ourselves and our families.

This difference that we are talking about applies to the farmers and the public as well, because today it affects both in a beneficial way. So, there is a lot to be said about this great difference in cost and hardship or easiness, and this has happened during my life timelifetime. So, I believe that our standard of living has improved a lot, at least in the sense of being able to feed ourselves with wheat and other farm products, because the cost of farm products are more affordable today than in the past; so, let us compare the cost of living, perhaps for the sake of seeing where we have come from and how much we have improved since then.

Today we often wonder how easy it is to grow and harvest wheat, at least it seems so when we look at a video that shows harvest time in the wheat farms, we see a few harvester machines in a field collect the wheat in no time at all, and because of this speed of these wonderful combine harvester machine food is a lot cheaper today than it used to be; of course these machines are only part of the machinery that helps the farmers produce the wheat, because there are many more machines required. So, let us talk about some other machinery that the farmers require.

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Some farmers' machinery. 

(Dear readers to view the farmers' machinery we are talking about, click on this link to visit our Hub Pages article,  Farming today compared to the old way.)

Now let us talk about the farmer’s machinery and the benefit that has come from them; of course, this is due to the industrial revolution that has started a long time ago, and last century has reached the farming communities improving it a lot. It seems to me that the farming sector has been one of the last communities that has benefited from the industrial revolution, anyhow, that doesn’t matter how it has worked out, because today we are better off, so, let us talk about these machines.

We can say that the most important machine in the farms is the tractor, as this machine can be used in all sorts of farming, in wheat farming the tractor is followed by the harvester machine and other devices to till the soil and to sow the seeds, and all these machines put together make farming a lot easier today, therefore, wheat can be produced a lot cheaper, this of course helps keep the price of bread and other wheat made products down, since wheat is the main food elements required in the western world to prepare food, therefore, this new way of farming helps a great deal just about everybody, since wheat is one of the main ingredients to make foods for us to eat, and we require lots of it.

Of course, if we want to talk about farming there is more to say than just wheat farming, because there are many other things that the bloke on the land can produce, see this link here-under how Wikipedia explains farming.

Agriculture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dear readers, now that we have talked about these farmer’s machines, let us talk about wheat farming and the great benefit that we get from it; we must be happy about what is happening because it is a good thing for all of us; so, we want to point out that there is a great difference in the ways of living, and we are a lot better off today than we were when I was young, so, let us compare some of the benefits that we have achieved, since today the farmers can use these farm machines that the industrial revolution has made for us.

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Let us compare these benefits.

Now, let us compare the great difference between today and the past. For comparison sake; today here in Australia there are a few places that a 600g loaf of bread costs you just one dollar, we know that this bread is sold at a very special price from these supermarket, in order to get the customers to the shop, but we wonder and we do not know how it can be done so cheap but they do it anyhow, this very low price of bread is possible only because the farmer can produce the wheat cheap for a start.

Then, because the wheat is cheap the price of bread can be cheap, the supermarkets make it even cheaper to attract customers, because the supermarkets have a price war to attract customers on bread and also on milk, so, we can buy a loaf of bread for one dollar and we can buy a two litre bottled milk for two dollars, that works out at one dollar per litre, again how they can do it I do not know, but they do it anyhow; so, there is plenty of cheap wholesome food around for us to enjoy, thanks to the farmers and the supermarkets. (We hope that this will last for a long time, but I have my doubts). Anyhow, I must point out that in the past, the price of bread and milk was a lot dear, in fact there have been times, when people were struggling to feed themselves, as we will explain before we finish writing this article.

But even though bread and milk is cheap beyond compare, there are people that still complain about the cost of living today, I know that what I am talking about here are only a few items and a lot more are needed to live well. But for comparison’s sake let us show you how easily we can afford to buy bread and milk to day, you see today, while I am writing this article for the first time, most people on the government old age pension in Australia receive about 700 dollars per fortnight, which would be about 50 dollars per day, they can easily afford to buy bread and milk and other food items.

Now that we have said how easy it is to buy bread and other staple food today, let us see how things were done in the past. You see, when I was young things were a lot harder than today, for sure we could not buy bread and milk as easy as we buy them today, because to produce these things took a lot more physical work than today, therefore, they were a lot more expensive, they were so because the way of producing them was different, in order to show you what we mean, we are going to describe how wheat farming was done at the time when I was young, and how hard it was for some people just to have something to eat, even if it was just a piece of bread and butter, bread and milk, or bread and tomatoes or other basic things that one could find in the fields if you were in the farms. Anyhow, let me describe how farming was done then, in this following sub-article, farming the old ways, so, we can have a better understanding of the whole issue, and be able to compare the past with the present way of farming.

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Farming the old way. 

Dear readers, to compare and explain how farming was done at the time when I was young, we are going to write here the way of farm life that was going on in those times; we know already that things have changed for the better since then, as we have written above, because of the tractor and new farming machinery that have come out since then, all due to the industrial revolution or progress; which we have experienced in the last hundred years or so, but when I was young there were a lot less advanced farming machine that could make farming easy, of course, the tractors were already there, but they were very expensive to buy for most of the small farmers, so, we had to do most things the old ways. Now let me tell you how life was in the farms of southern Italy in the early fifties and earlier.

It is a well-known fact that in those times and even now, there are two times during the year, when in the farms everybody is working hard and working very long hours; one of this was sowing time and the other is harvest time, let us start with sowing times. When I was young the working day at sowing time would start two hours before dawn, because we had to make the horses, mules and other animals ready for working in the fields, we had to feed them and water them as well, it had to be done in such a way that everything should be made ready to go into the fields at daybreak.

At that time of the year in the morning it was very cold and there are lots of frosty days, so, in the morning the outside temperature could be around zero or below, it is very hard then to harness the horses to the plough as everything one touches is so cold; but then when one gets going it is not so bad, because walking in the fields holding the plough in one hand and guiding the horses with the other hand is hard work and it makes one warm. This type of very hard work at sowing time goes on for about a month if the weather is good and perhaps it could be longer than a month. When the sowing is done then everything slows down again, but we had still to look after the farms’ animals and do other farming chores; see this article My farm life continues, where we describe what we did after sowing, and what we did during the winter time.

Now let us talk about harvest time, since this is the busiest time in the farms, because harvest time is when the farmers collect the fruits of their hard labour, so, there is no time to be wasted at harvest time, therefore, this was and is the most hectic time of the year for all the farmers, and it is a very worrying time too for the farmers, you see if something goes wrong all their work goes down the drain for the whole year, so to speak. Here we are talking about mostly how things were run in the farms when I was young.

Now let us say a few things about today farming, especially about wheat farming, because wheat is one of the most important produces that we need from farming, as we have already said at the beginning of this article. With wheat we make bread and pasta and other bakery products, therefore, it is the most important farm produce that we use. So, let us compare what is changed in wheat farming since I was young:

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Wheat harvest in the fifties. 

The following description is the way of wheat harvest time in the fifties. When I was young we had already a horse drawn harvester that was helping us, this early harvester was able to cut the wheat plants and tie them in bundles, so, we were already halfway down the track of progress, as this machine saved us a lot of work, because we did not have to harvest by hand, which is a very labour intensive job, as we are going to describe later in this article. Anyhow, at this time of the year everybody in the farm works hard and for very long hours, it is very hot and everything is very dry. We get up very early in the morning, we get the horses ready for working by feeding them and watering them, then we harness the horses and set them to pull the harvester, and off we go in the fields for another day of hard work, if everything goes well, we might be able to go over a ten-acre field just in one day with this harvester. The harvester needs two people to get it working, one drives the horses, and another regulate the harvester, the harvester goes around the field and leaves these bundles of wheat or other cereal, whatever has been sown in the field. Now these bundles of wheat will be collected in hips around the field from other people as soon as possible, the hips of these bundles of wheat are made is such a way that if it rains the rain would run off easily, these hips of wheat will be collected later when we finish with the harvester, perhaps in a week or two, then we will go back to the fields with a cart to take everything on a special plot near the farmhouse, where the trashing machine will be hired and set.

When we collect and cart everything to the farm house, we work very long days, we get up before 4 am, but we have a break of two or three hours at lunchtime because it is too hot to do anything, then we go back to work and between real work and looking after the animals we finish at dusk around 8 pm, after that we only have to feed the horses: this sort of work goes on for more than a month and sometimes up to two months, with no breaks at all seven days a week. Everybody in the farm works to their maximum and they are very tired, they are also very worried about the possible fire hazard, and also of any thunderstorms at this time of the year, since anyone of these happenings can destroy the whole crop, and a whole year of hard work can go up in smoke. So, we are all working hard, and at the same time we are praying God and waiting for the trashing machine to come and finish our harvest.

When some famer did not have a lot of wheat to trash, they could use a place in common with other farmers, so that, the trashing machine would not have to be set several times. The trashing machines that were around and we would hire together with other farmers came with a large crew, because it was a very large machine, bigger than the one shown in this article, it had a crew of about twenty people, it was a very interesting time when we were trashing our own wheat, oats, barley, etc. Because we were anxious to see how much wheat and other product we had made.

Now there were many other things that I could tell you, but I better not to make this story short. Anyhow, here I want to say that when one goes through these life experiences in the farm, one knows that farming life is hard; but since this is the only way to grow food to feed ourselves, we the farmers keep working in our farms to feed ourselves and the rest of the community.

So, we the farmers feel that it would be right if the rest of the community appreciates our efforts, so, they should be thanking us for all the hard work that we have done, after all, we are providing all those things that are necessary to makes food for the rest of the community; but it does not happen that way, because even when we are working our guts out, and while we are doing that we are becoming dull, the rest of the community does not care and they label us as dull people; their attitude hurts us very much and we believe that we don’t deserve that; just because we are farm people, but we have done our part of hard work for our own benefit and for the benefit of the entire community. So, we the farmers feel hurt to say the least.

This is how life was then in the small farms of Southern Italy. Anyhow, this town people attitude as I have said above, plus some very lean years when we hardly could survive, and because we had only a small farm and it would have been hard to expand was one of the reasons why I left farming and migrated to Australia. But anyhow let us continue to describe how harvesting was done the very old way, so, that we can compare it to today’s living.

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Harvesting the very old way. 

Now, before we end this article, because we want to compare the very old ways of farming with today farming, we need to say how harvesting wheat was done before my times; here we need to say that I have witnessed the last part of this old practice when I was young. You see, when I was young we were already using a horse drawn harvester, and it was very helpful; but there were people that had some small holdings and we had one of these ourselves, it was in a place, where it was hard to go with the harvester that we had, so, we had to use the old ways for harvesting our wheat for that small wheat field, because that was the only way to do it for one reason or another.

So, let me describe how harvesting was done in those old bygone days; at harvesting time strange as it may seem today, we could hire some specialized people that were good at using the sickle, these people usually went from town to town to do this seasonal harvesting job; we need also to explain that in Southern Italy because the terrain has different altitude the wheat reaches maturity at different times, this was helping these seasonal workers to have a longer span of work, now just to compare those very hard times with today times, I have to tell you that these workers were sleeping anywhere they could on a sack filled up with straws under a shelter if they could find one, as they could not afford anything else. In the morning they would get up early and wait in the town square hoping that somebody would hire them for the day.

Now let us say that we had a small plot about one acre and we could not use the harvester, because it was not possible to go there, we would hire four people and form a gang that could harvest one acre in one day and collect it in hips, that later would be taken on a cart to the farm house to be threshed one way or another.

In the old times anything that had grown in the field was collected, it needed to be collected for the people to survive, because the fields did not produce as much as they do today, because they could not be cultivated with our modern machines. You see, today we have the tractor to cultivate the fields and it does a better job than the horse drawn plough, we have many types of fertilizer to help us grow more wheat but let us go back to talk about very old harvesting times.

Wheat harvesting and trashing the very old time. 

Now I must say briefly how the older generations before my time used to thresh their harvests, to collect their produce. Now, let us suppose that it was a few bundles of wheat to be threshed one could even extract the wheat by hitting them with a stick, but let us say that we had a cartful, or many cartsful for that matter, then we had to use a different method, which is the way that most farm used in the very old times for centuries, before the trashing machine was invented, so, let me tell you how it was done.

I happen to know this procedure, because in the farms when I was young, we were still using this method with smaller crops, most likely broad beans, lentils, chickpeas, linseed, and other farm produce that were not meant to go through the wheat trashing machine. When we were doing this procedure of trashing these minor crops, the elder would always be telling us that this was the way that they used to collect their wheat as well and usually it took them a few months to collect all the season produce. So, now let me describe this to you, so that we can compare the difference.

In order to do this old trashing, first of all we needed to prepare a piece of ground that is very solid and smooth, this can be achieved by stripping the old dry grass on a piece of land that had a large clay content, then wet it with a little bit of water to make it compact; once that was ready we would place our wheat or whatever was to be threshed and collected on this clean ground, then we would get our horses mule and donkeys whatever animals were available and drive them around and around until everything was threshed. Of course, there was a lot more to say, but let us make it short otherwise it would become too boring.

Now, once the threshing was done we had to separate the produce from the straw and any other foreign matter, this was achieved by removing the straws from the top layer making sure that no produce was left with the straws, at the same time we would collect the bottom layer in a hip, once that was done we would have to clean that produce by using the wind, to take away the finer parts that were still mixed with the wheat or whatever it was, and there were many other things that we could use to get this wheat clean, by the end of the day we could have collected two or three hundred kilograms of produce, and when we did that we thought that we had done well for a day work.

In the very ancient times was even worse, see what they were using in the Medieval Times, here is a link to check out some ancient farm tools including the Flail and Winnowing Basket used to collect and clean wheat.

Medieval Farm Tools

I hope that this gives the modern reader a view of how thing were done in the old times, so, I do not want to say much more about how all this threshing and cleaning of the wheat was done, because even writing about it is boring today, but anyhow it needed to be done in those days, because that was the only way to collect our wheat to make bread and other things to eat. Now, my dear reader’s do you see how hard was then even to collect wheat for ourselves, so that we could make bread and other cereal product.

I hope I have been able to write something that really sets up the great difference of the ways of life that we were living then and the ways of life that we are living now, for this I want you to compare and judge for yourself how much better off we are today.

To the young people who think that today life is hard, let me describe what I have witnessed when I was young, because then life really was harder than today, you see those days everybody had to find how to earn enough to feed themselves there were no handover from the government. So, the very poor people of those days were trying to collect anything they could to feed themselves, as I have witnessed these things myself, so, let me describe this to you:

You see, at harvest time this is what I have witnessed, I have seen old and poor people mainly old ladies go around the fields and pick up any ear of wheat that was left behind in the fields, one ear of wheat here and another ear wheat there until they had the strength to go around, they did this each day until harvest time was over and there was nothing else to collect; and I tell you what these poor people were happy if in the end they had collected enough ears of wheat that they could trash and clean themselves, perhaps they could have collected enough to make 50 to 100 kilos of wheat during harvest time and they were happy because, they could make bread from this wheat and not go hungry for a few months.

Now I hope that you can see what I mean when I say that the youths of today don’t know anything about hard times.

Anyhow, I hope that today this abundance of cheap food lasts for a long time because things can change in the future. Today the climatic change is the worrying part because we don’t know how much it is going to affect the farms and our lives.  

I believe that this article is a positive article, since the farmers and everybody else  is doing well. But things can change and be negative, and this is what we will be talking about in our next article, which in this case will be about farming in Australia, with a negative twist in, Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business

To see more and our original article click on this link, Farming today compared to the old way

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Wednesday, April 26, 2023

THE RENTAL PROBLEM IN AUSTRALIA.

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IN THIS BLOG WE WILL WRITE BUILDING ARTICLES, HOW TO DO IT YORSELF BUILDING WORKS, WHICH CAN HELP TO KNOW WHAT TO DO, IF YOU WANT TO FIX THE HOUSE YOURSELF. WE WILL ALSO DISCUSS RENTAL PROBLEM THAT WE MAY INCOUNTER WHEN RENTING, AND THE PROBLEMS OF RUNNING AFFORDABLE RENTAL PROPERTIES. 
This article can also be found at this link, Australia Rental Problems Can Be Solved


We believe that the rental problem in Australia can be solved, if the government charges on affordable housing is reduced. You see, today to have a rental business is not worth much, because of the exagerated charges they have to pay. Reduce those charges and there will be more affordable rentals. Anyhow, there are many other things that can be done to make rentals more affordable, some of which we will talk about it in this article. 

Welcome to our article, Australia Rental Problems Can Be Solved.

The people that are renting, complain that they cannot afford to pay the rent, and the landlords complain that it is hard to keep the rental properties going, because there is not enough money in this business anymore, and some of them have given up renting, bercause there are too many problems and not enough money.  So, this is becoming a real problem. What people do not not realize that the Australian rental shortage problem can be solved, if we do what needs to be done, after we pinpoint the reasons, why this is happening. Because in the past, if there was any rental shortage, it was not as bad as it is now. But I believe that the people in charge do not know what to do, or, they do not want to know what to do, because what needs to be done may favour the small investor, which is the middle class that nobody wants to know about, since they can look after themselves, if they are in a plain field, so, nobody cares about them, even though they are the people that make the economy work in a balanced way.

Anyhow, let us talk about the rental problem. These days, we can hear every day in the news, that there are a lot of people in Australia that cannot afford to pay their rent or buy a house or unit to live in. People believe that in the past it was easier to buy or rent, and I believe it myself that it was easier. So, in this article, we are going to discuss what could be the reasons, and if there are ways to improve the situation. To do that we need to compare what is different today, and if there are laws or by laws that make the rental properties more expensive to run, and therefore, it is harder for the property owners to rent their properties at a lower affordable price.  

Now what I am writing here is just common sense, that anyone should be able to work out. So, I wonder why the smart politician have not picked it up, what they are doing wrong, because I can see a few things myself that could make the rental situation better. In fact, I believe that to restore the rental affordability issue, it is a lot easier than most people think, it all depends, if the politicians do what they must do the right way, and they must not try to impress people just to gain a few votes, like what they are doing now, they want to tell the owner, that they cannot increase the rent of their properties, when for about ten years or more, the rent have not gone up like everything else, but the charges to run their property has. So, today the owners are forced to pass the entire charge increase, that they are asked to pay from the authorities in charge, and some of them ask the owners to pay, just because they need the money. We will say something about this hereunder.   

 

The rental affordability issues. 

 Having said that, now let us start discussing this affordability issues. We believe that in the past properties were more affordable, so, we must look at what has changed to understand the reasons. This is not easy to do since the Australian economy is a capitalist economy and free to run its own way. So, most prices are automatically set, from the supply and demand market, when there are not enough properties on the market the price will go up. When the prices go up, more properties will be built and come on the market, so, the market will go down, and it is self-balancing, and sometimes it is good, at other times it is not.

Anyhow, for me that I have followed the rental market for a while, I believe that in the past it was easier to rent or buy, but the greedy politicians have changed the laws, so, there are a lot more expenses today than in the past , in some cases 50% of the rent covers the bylaws charges levied on that property, therefore some property owners cannot make much money from their rental investment, for this reason people that were going to invest in properties, they do not see enough money coming in and they do not invest in properties. People need an incentive to invest their money on rental properties, or at least know that they are not going to lose their money if they buy rental properties. 

 Anyhow, it is a well-known fact that people with a lot of money, knowing that the rental market is risky, they keep away from it, so, it is up to the small investor, with limited money and struggling that invest in rental accommodations, but even these people are kept back from the never ending expenses, that the authorities levy on their property, not only that, but today while I am writing this blog, some politicians in Canberra are talking about limiting the rent increase that the properties’ owners can charge. Okay, it sounds good, and it might work for a very short time. But if they pass this law, then the few rental property owners left, may have to close their rental properties and there will be less properties for rent.

I believe that the government needs to think what they are doing, because if they want cheaper rent, then their levies on properties must come down a lot, it is outrageous that in some case, a rented house, may only earn one per cent of its value in a year, when everybody else make a lot more. Anyhow, there is very little money to be made in rental properties, but there are a lot of problems to run them. So, the few investors that are left wonder, if they will continue to stay on the market or sell out, if they can find a buyer. But it is very hard to find anyone because rental properties do not earn enough money to run them at a profit.

 

Some discussions on rental issues. 

Anyhow, I have called this article, Australia rental problems solved, so, in a way a have promised my readers that I can solve them, so, now I must come up with a theory, how the rental issues can be solved.

I believe that there are at least two choices, one, all the governments involved in rentals must chose, whether to build lots of affordable rentals themselves, and run them at no profit or at a loss, and this can cost several billions and may keep the government budget in the red for a long time.

The other way is that the government authorities charge less levies on rental properties and do other things that keeps the small investors interested in rental properties. So, let me tell you a couple of things that come to my mind.

Here I am talking about the small investors only, because I do not care if the rich people lose money. Anyhow, one of the charges that hurts most small investors in Queensland is the land tax. The land tax is a levy from the Queensland Government, these days, they charge $1.7 per thousand of the land value. So, a property that is on a block of land of ONE MILLION, will be charged, about SEVENTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAS, per year, then there are the Rates, the Urban Uility chages, the insurance, the maintenance of the building, and other charges. Now, you can see why rental properties are not worth keeping. The Queensland government may argue that they need the money of the Land Tax, but that is not helping the rental market, and it is driving the few small investors left away.

I believe that the government authorities do not care for the small investors, or anybody that owns a property, and they are treated in a way that makes me think they are discriminated, when they deserve better, to prove that, I am pasting an article I fount on the internet. (And I quote).

Public Trustee leaves pensioner without money for food and takes 40 per cent of his income

There's growing concern about the treatment of some of the country's most vulnerable people by a government body that manages their finances. In Western Australia, the public trustee charges higher fees to people with assets, even if they have little cash to spare. (End of quote).

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This behaviour of this government body above, it makes me think that most government bodies are like that. So, the small investor, would have been better off, if during his life, he would have spent his money to enjoy himself, instead of saving to buy a property investment, that in the end make his life harder instead of better.

 

 How we can solve these rental issues. 

Now let me go back to the rental problem. Apart what we have said above, the other thing that comes to my mind is that years ago, the assets test for pensioners sickness benefit and other, was 1.5 dollars per thousand, but today it is three dollars per thousand, so, a pensioner is deemed to earn $7.5 per cent, on their rental property value, when in fact, he may earn only one per cent. You see why I think that the small investor is in a disadvantaged position and is being discriminated.  

My view here is this. If the authorities want to save Australia from a huge debit by building lots of affordable rental accommodations, they can choose to abolish the assets test, not only on the house you are living in, but also on the first rental house or unit that is rented, or on the market for rent. This will keep some of the small investors in the rental market, and the problem is half solved. Anyhow, this is my view how the rental problem can be solved.

What I am suggesting here, is a possible way how to solve the rental problem for good, and will save the governments billions of dollars, because they may need to build fewer rental properties themselves.

You may say that what I have suggested will cost the government money. I know it will, but it will be a lot less than if they build all the affordable rental themselves.  

There is more that can be said, but I will say it next time I write something about rentals. 

To see more click on this link, Australia Rental Problems Can Be Solved

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Thursday, February 23, 2023

Australia affordable houses.

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IN THIS BLOG WE WILL WRITE SEVERAL BUILDING ARTICLES, ABOUT HOW TO DO IT YORSELF BUILDING WORKS, WHICH CAN HELP TO KNOW WHAT TO DO, IF YOU WANT TO FIX THE HOUSE YOURSELF. 
Here are some other links to our internet articles


Let us talk about affordable houses, Here in Australia, most houses are a stand alone house on a block of land, and some affordable houses will look like this one in the picture. Anyhow, because a simple small house, would be more affordable than a large one, it will attract more buyers than a large and well decoerated house. So, there are builders that will build small houses. Because they are easyer to sell. 

Australia affordable houses

Welcome to my article, Australia affordable houses

Dear readers, this may not be the article where you can find houses to buy today, because it is the story of my life and what I did, when I was working building these affordable houses. In those times, new affordable houses were built on the fringe of the city in new suburbs, which is the same as today, if you want a new affordable house, you must look for it, in the new suburbs. We will also talk about earning and saving money, one of the aims for saving money is to buy our own house. So, let us talk the houses that we can afford.

As we know, houses are not all the same, because houses come in a variety of styles and sizes. Of course, we want to live in the best houses available, but most of us cannot afford expensive houses, therefore, we should be happy to live in any house that we can afford to buy or rent.

For this reason of affordability, to satisfy the house supply market, there are several types of houses that are being built at any given time. In this article, we are going to talk about the type of houses that I ended up working on, in the sixties. Because this article is meant to cover the story of my life, and what I did for a living.

In the early sixties, I ended up working on average houses that the working class could afford to buy, or at least the aim of the builders that were building them, was based in this affordability, since they had designed them with this purpose, because in the end, even though they had been built cheap not all of us workers would afford to buy these types of houses. But anyhow this was the purpose of building these types of affordable houses in the early sixties.

I guess that today is the same, some builders, build these affordable houses at the outskirt of any town or city, since the blocks of land are cheaper to buy.

Now let us try to describe how we were building these houses from scratch.

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Building houses from scratch. 

Anyhow, I am writing these articles about building houses from scratch, because I want to tell you the story of my life, and what I did when I came to Australia. But at the same time, I want to write something useful for my readers, and I believe that knowing how houses are built is useful to know, because we live in houses, therefore, we want to know as much as we can about them. Because sometimes we need to know how to do it yourself repairs and other things, since houses need to be maintained, if we want to enjoy them fully. So, I am going to describe how these houses were built, with as many details as I can, so that anyone interested can learn something useful from these building articles.

Now has I have explained in our last article, I was working in the building industry with this Italian builder, which was good for me because my native language is Italian. Now, with this builder not only we were re-stumping or building rooms under the existing houses, which required a lot of work to be done by hand, but we were building new houses from scratch. As I have said at the beginning of the sixties most of the digging were done by hand, specially the type of work that we were doing on these new houses, as machines were expensive to hire then, So, they were used only, if there was a lot of digging to be done, and with the machines of those days we could only dig straight forward things and not small detailed digging, as they were required to build these houses, anyhow as I said, I did a lot of this digging work myself, as I was employed as builder labour, and this was one of the jobs that I had to do.

Therefore now, let us imagine that I have finished digging the foundation and these stump holes for this new house, and now, we need to lay concrete in the foundation, and to concrete the stumps foundation and the stumps themselves. So, let us go over what we had to do, because in those times these things were all done on site by hand and started from scratch.

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 Making your own concrete. 

Making your own concrete on site from scratch

Let me explain, what is meant by concrete in buildings and how it is made You see, if during your life, you are going to do renovations, it is useful to know how to make your own concrete, so that you understand what is required and how and why it must be done in certain ways, you will find this information written in this article. Some people can say that today things are different, so why bother to tell us this stuff about how to mix concrete properly, when we can buy concrete ready mixed by truckload, or in bags and all you need to do is to add water to make concrete. I say, okay, you can do that. But there are times and places, when you must do these things the old way.

Therefore, I believe that you still need to know how concrete is made from scratch, because that is the only way if you don’t want to make mistakes. Therefore, let me tell you how we were mixing our concrete in the sixties, and what is required to do that and how it is supposed to be done, if you want a good job done and the concrete to last a long time.

By the way, here we need to clarify one thing, what is meant by the word concrete, because most people replace it with the word cement. On building sites, the word concrete means the element mixed together able to harden to a solid consistency within a certain length of time, therefore, it has got to be done the right way.

One of the most important things while mixing concrete is that the concrete must be well mixed and to a workable consistency using the least amount of water possible, because if too much water is used then the concrete becomes weaker, therefore, it must be done properly.

Usually concreting and other jobs are done according to its specifications, you see, any firm that makes building plans, for a house or something of more importance, they must write also the specification how the job needs to be done. In these specifications it will be written what material to use, how to use it and the quantity and quality required. Therefore, to concrete a foundation for an average small house, the specification could state that the concrete must be mixed to a consistency at least 1 to 6; for people that knew this, it means that to mix the concrete you should use 1 part of Portland cement 2 parts of river sand and 4 parts of gravel (aggregate) and mix it as required until an even consistency is achieved. For the stumps usually would be a bit more cement than the foundations. But I must say that sometimes even these rules had to be changed a bit depending on the material that can be delivered on that local site.

Now let us say that we are ready to start mixing the first batch of concrete, as we have made everything ready, and everything has been delivered. To make concrete you need at least four elements of materials plus clean water; 1 Portland cement, 2 washed river sand, 3 clean or washed gravel and 4 reinforcement steel rods, and it is helpful if you have a mixer if you have to mix a large amount of concrete, because to mix by hand is hard work and the concrete needs to be well mixed.

Now let us start the mixer and make the first batch, while the mixer is turning around, the very first thing you put in the mixer is water, one must be careful not to put too much water to start with, it has got to be just enough to mix everything to a certain consistency, so let us say that we put 8 litres of water (the amount of water can be different, since it depends on the amount of water that is already in the (sand gravel) aggregate) then we put in the mixer cement, next is the river sand twice as much as the cement and then the clean gravel 4 time as much as the cement; here the mixer is going around and mixing everything together.

Please note, that if you change the way you put your materials in the mixer, from what I have described above, you may have different result, and usually it would take longer to mix everything properly and to the right consistency.

For people that do this job all the time it is easy for them to see if the concrete that is being mixed has the right consistency required, once you know this, if it is too dry just add a bit of water and if it is too wet you should add a bit of everything else. There you are it is not too hard if you know how to do it.

What I have written above applies only to house building of less importance, for building that are large and important the concrete needs to be to a very high standard and specifications, so, here again you need to know what is needed before you do anything.

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Concrete requires teamwork. 

To concrete well and do a fair amount of work on these houses you need a team, even if it is a small team. Our team was usually three of us, I as builder labour, John as bricklayer and Con the contractor who was a bricklayer and concreter. We didn’t mind if we switched around a bit to do the job. So, I was usually on the mixer mixing the concrete, one was with a wheelbarrow taking the concrete from the mixer to the foundations that we were concreting, and one was fixing the concrete in place.

Fixing the concrete for the foundation was physically the lightest job, when we were mixing the concrete with this mixer on site, but it is the most responsible job, because while concreting the foundations, you must make sure that the steel rods reinforcement was in the right position, at the same time you had to pack the concrete down and then the concrete in the foundations has to be finished level, this was easy when the ground was level, but when the ground was not level, it was necessary that steps were made and they had to be to gauge, which was equal to the thickness of one or two laid bricks or more, or the thickness of a laid block, if blocks were going to be used to build the walls on this foundation, whatever was going to be used to lay on the foundations, we had to try to make an adjustment while we were laying the foundations; therefore, this was the job for the experts, at that time it was not that hard, because mixing by hand even using a mixer was a slow job, so, the bloke that was fixing the concrete had enough time to do his job right.

What I have written above is how we used to lay small house foundations in the early sixties, which are the same as we lay foundations today, except that today we order concrete already mixed, but we have to be ready with everything and everything has got to be in the right place, because the concrete ready-mix truck will unload its concrete quickly, so, there is no time to do anything else except to fix the concrete at the right level as quickly as possible.

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Concreting stumps on site. 

Now let me go back again to the early sixties, when we were concreting these stumps on site, this procedure is not done much today, the reasons for this change it is because the buildings have changed, and today these stumps can be made in a concrete factory, and when cured can be delivered to the building site, where the worker can erect them as required.

To concrete these stumps on site we had steel forms of various length, and these forms were assembled together with steel pins, so, we would assemble these steel forms and then start to mix concrete, we had also to make sure that the stumps foundations were exactly in the right place by using the marked profiles and tight line between them.

In this case, it was an easy job for the fellow that is mixing concrete, but a lot harder for the blokes that had to pour the concrete in the stumps formwork and make sure that the stump was exactly in the right place and finished at the right height and were also plumb (perfect vertical position). It was also necessary that some reinforcing rods were placed in the right position with a purpose made devise. These are how we made those onsite stumps in the sixties.

These concrete stumps that we made in the sixties were better that the timber stumps that they were replacing, because it was an improvement as they did not rot with the passing of time and the white ants could not eat them. Here we can say that these concrete stumps on site were easy to make, if you knew the procedure, in fact it was easier to make a set of stumps than to fix concrete stumps made in the factory, as there is no heavy lifting involved.

But although these concrete stumps were easy to make, they are hard to move to a different position. So, to anyone that is going to attempt to dig out these stumps to move them to a new position, they better think twice because I tell you that the part that is under the ground is a lot larger than the stumps at the top. Remember what I said in our previous article, we had to dig a hole sixty-centimetre dip in the natural ground, and at the bottom should be a level base not less than forty centimetres square.

I believe that we have said enough in this article, as we have explained the work that we did on these affordable houses and we will be coming back to talk about more building work in our next article, House building in Brisbane

To see more and the original article click on this link, Australia affordable houses

See you soon.

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Monday, September 5, 2022

Australian housing industry.

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT IS BEING RENTED, GET IN TOUCH WITH US. IN THIS BLOG WE WILL ALSO WRITE BUILDING ARTICLES, IN FACT, WE WILL EVEN WRITE SEVERAL HOW TO DO IT YORSELF BUILDING WORKS, WHICH CAN HELP TO KNOW WHAT TO DO, IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS IN YOUR HOUSE. 

Here are some other links to our internet articles





I have been a bricklayer most of my life, so, I have been working and building these type of houses in the seventies. Houses building in Australia, seems to evolve more rapidly than in the old countries of Europe, perhaps because it is a new country. Anyhow you will understend this change when you read our blogs, 


Welcome to our article, Australian building industry 

Building houses in the sixties. 

Dear readers, the following blogs that I am writing here, will be about my life story and what I did to earn a living when I camo to Australia. Anyhow, these articles will be written is such a way that can help people to DIY brickwork and other building things, which we believe can help people that are willing to try DIY small building or repairs, but first let me explain how I acquired that knowledge myself.

When I came to Australia in the sixties, I ended up working in the building industry, we were working mainly on fixing old houses, or building new house from scratch, units and warehouses, so, I ended up learning how lots of building things were done, in the end I became a bricklayer, and have worked most of my life as a bricklayer.

Anyhow, in this article we are going to write about; the Australian housing industry in the sixties; Working in the Australian housing and building industry; Earning and saving money if you can; and Working with this Italian builder.

We believe that the Australian housing and building industry, is one of the major employment industries in Australia, you can say that this is so in other countries. But I believe that in other countries building new houses is not as important as it is in Australia. One of the reasons for this is that Australia is a new country, it needs and takes in many emigrants. In the sixties Australia was taking emigrants in a regulated way, now because the population grows steadily also accommodation need to grow steadily, therefore, new houses need to be built to keep a steady balance. This building of new houses gives opportunities for the newcomers to be employed, since there is manual work involved, therefore, a healthy cycle is created; but even with these opportunities the building industry has its ups and down, as we know. So, let us talk about it and try to make sense, if we can.  

You know, the housing building industry and real estate work together to complete the cycle of supplying to the public what is needed, so, both have their ups and downs, and it cannot be avoided. It could have been helpful if one could foretell what is going to happen next year, on the housing market, but it is not possible to guess what is going to happen in the future. If people can know this, then they could make money, since they could invest their money at the right time.

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Working in the building industry. 

As I have said, when I came to Australia from Italy, I ended up working in the building industry. Now let me explain this working position, working on building in Australia is a temporary job, because even the employer is subject to the same opportunities of work and he cannot help it, therefore, one is never sure what is going to happen next, when the job you are working on is finished, therefore, there were concerns about our employment status, so, we kept asking ourselves, whether our employer would get another job to do, before we finished the one we were doing, but even though we were thinking that, we still worked hard to finish the job on hand, as soon as possible, because to find work you had to be competitive.

Well, I should say that although this small Italian builder did lots of small jobs, it did work out all right most times, so, we were able to move from one job to another all-around Brisbane and to other close by town/s. Of course, this would cause worries if you had no transport of your own and you had to rely on some friends or the employer to take you on the work site, where the building was going to be built, but we managed somehow.

I remember that there were times, when I had to get up early and catch the first tram to the city, and then I had to catch the second tram to another suburb, where the builder would pick me up and drive me to the onsite job, in the evening after eight hours or more of hard work, I had to go back home, which took again a long time, but anyhow we managed all right, after all we were here in Australia to earn money, so, as long as we had a job to go to and earn money, we were happy to do that. You see, on building sites workers can earn above other people wages, but there was this uncertainty because there was no guaranty that the work would last, and it also was hard work all day long.

Anyhow, it was a good job with good opportunities to learn and improve your knowledge of building something yourself. You see, in those times we could improve our working and earning position more easily than today; it was possible then because a lot of things were simple, and therefore, they could be done just by using your common sense. Of course, there were always inspections from local authorities to follow, but once you knew what it was required, they were easy to follow, if you used your brains diligently, therefore, we should say that we had more opportunities then compared to today opportunities. I believe that it was so, because the building we were building were small houses, so, if you were a tradesman, you most likely could be the builder as well.

Having said that, now let us see, how this type of work affected us newcomers moneywise.      

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Learning how to earn and save money. 

Whatever you do in life, the most important thing is; Earning and saving money. In my case, because there was uncertainty of not having a permanent job in the building industry, we soon learned that whatever money we earned from our job, we had to save some, otherwise we could have problems soon or later; so, this disadvantage that we had in this job pushed most of us building workers to become good at saving money, because we wanted to feel safe and independent.

So, let me talk about money. In Australia because the economy is based on capitalism the more money you can earn and save the better off you are; of course, this is also true to most other part of the world, but in Australia seems to be more so, because it is a new country, and people rely more on what they can earn than anywhere else in the world. This is because there are not existing reach families that live on the earnings of the properties that have been passed down from generation to generations. Therefore, in Australia is mostly up to yourself, if you want to get richer, you should try harder to earn and save money. You see, most of the people here, have earned their own money.

Therefore, we must understand that in Australia, not only you have to try to earn money, but it is important that you should save it too, and at the same time you have to try to improve your working position, so, you can be more independent and not rely on others. This attitude can help if it happens that you lose your temporary job, and also by saving money you can start one day buying your own house, which is the most important thing that people must do, if they want to live an independent decent life. I know now that most of you are saying that this buying a house is a hard thing to do, but you see, this can be done because I have done it myself.

Anyhow, I believe that I have said enough about this money business; so, let me go back to tell you, my progress in the building industry and what I did to become a tradesman.

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Working and learning with this Italian builder. 

Dear readers, in these articles, while I am telling you the story about myself working in the Australian building industry, I am going to try to give you details of how things were done in those days; therefore, if you are one of those people that want to do your own building renovations one day, on those building that we built then, you can somehow guess what you can find, because you already know how we built them.

Now let me go back to when I started work with this Italian builder, who was a bricklayer and concreter, we were working on houses and because there was not enough bricklaying work on these houses, as they were mostly built with timber, we were building only the foundations, the concrete stumps and some brickwork as the base of the house. Of course, we did also some jobs under the existing houses, and this has given me an opportunity to learn many things about those old houses in Brisbane.

Just for comparison’s sake, to see the difference between those times and today, let me describe to you what we did to prepare a new base for a new timber house, which would be setting on concrete stumps and some brick walls.

First of all, we went to set up the site, if it was not set up from the builder or carpenter that was building the timber house. This setting up required that we should fix some timber frame to the ground with pegs and per the measurement in the plan. These timber frames are called profiles, and they are marked accurately to the measurement on the plan, so that we had the right measurement to go by, to start digging the foundations for the stumps and brick walls.

Then we had to dig the foundations, and this was mostly my job as I was the labour and I was pretty good at digging, this may seem hard to believe but even digging one has to be an expert to do a good job, as the shape and depth of the foundations is important to do a good job. Just to show you what I mean to dig a hole for a new concrete stump, 20x20 centimetres as most stumps were supposed to be; the hole for this stump should be in exactly the right place, it should be at least sixty centimetres deep in natural ground and at the bottom should have a circumference of at least 40 centimetres or more. These were the average specifications then, unless it was stated otherwise. I know this because I have dug several hundreds of them if not thousands.

All the tools that I needed to do this digging job were a pick a post hole shovel and a crowbar, it usually would take me a couple of days to dig the entire house holes, which could usually be between twenty and thirty holes. You see I was able to dig a hole in less than half an hour, but it was hard work. Sometimes when there was some brickwork to do, we had also to dig these foundations by hand; the foundations were usually dug according to specification, which usually would be 60 centimetre deep in the natural ground, this means that if the grounds had been filled up that filling should not be counted as depth.

Anyhow, before I finish writing this article, I want to say that those houses that we were building in the sixties, with this builder contractor that I was working for, they were average affordable house that the average family could afford to buy, and therefore, they were sold easily.

Now, I believe that I have said enough in this article and although there is a lot more that can be said, we are going to tell you in our next article, which is going to be about how we made those concrete stumps on site, while we were working on these, Australia affordable houses

To see more click on this link, Australian building industry

See you soon.

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