Houses

I am obsessed with househunting. My husband can't understand why I go through the real estate part of the weekend paper. Every weekend. I'm not at the point where I go to open houses (unless, of course, it's the neighbour's place...) just for fun but sometimes, just sometimes, I'm very very tempted.

It's normally just an idle curiousity that drives me. A 'what kind of place would we buy if we could afford to' sort of thing. It drives me crazy, however, when I'm looking at the price range that we could buy in and finding houses that look really good and could be absolute bargains for us but know that we can't put in any offers or do anything until this place is fixed and we can sell it. So, at present, I'm a bit cranky with slow insurance companies. And the body corporate.

There are some sorts of houses from some areas that I would just love to live in and I think that's what I keep looking for. If I was in Britain, it would be an older house, possibly full of little corridors and rooms that surprise you when you walk round the corner because you really didn't there would be a room there. One with character, anyway (and, for the record, that doesn't necessarily mean beams and tiny rooms). Oh, and a big fireplace.

If I was in Melbourne, it would definitely be a house similar to the one my sister lives in. A single story wooden slatted house, with a veranda and wrought iron decorations. There are suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney that have houses just like that on wide, tree lined street. Street after street of them.

Here, in the tropics, it would be a Queenslander. For those not from around here, it's quite simple. This is a hot, wet climate. Prone (in case you hadn't noticed) to flooding. The original people who settled here knew this and they designed a house to cope with it. Also, crocodiles can't climb. So, a typical Queenslander is a single story house on stilts. Usually the floor of the house is high enough that you can walk under it. They are usually designed around some central rooms with a wide veranda that goes around the entire house. Sometimes this is enclosed, or at least partially, with old fashioned casement windows from wall to wall so you can open up any part of the house to let the breeze flow through. They are open, airy houses perfectly suited for the tropics.

I love houses. One day...