Modern living....the good and the bad.....

We have our next house sit lined up for Friday. In the meantime we are having a few days with our son and daughter in law. They live in the Wynnum/Manly area, in a fairly new subdivision.  Their house is only about 3 or 4 years old. My son is a builder, and although he didn’t build this home himself, they have changed the interior design a little and it is a very practical home.

They have a large open plan living area, three bedrooms, a study that could be another bedroom, a media room that could be another bedroom, two bathrooms, and good sized deck for outdoor entertaining. The one thing that is most noticeable these days with modern homes is the size of the land that comes with the house. (In New Zealand we call it the section, in Australia it is called the block.)

This photo brings back some memories. It was taken in 1984. Here our son is 16 years old, and it is his first day at work. He had his bike and backpack full of food. He is off to his first day at his apprenticeship. He worked on the Pizza Hutt in Napier, New Zealand, a building now demolished I think. He helped dig the footings for the foundation, and was in serious pain for a few weeks, blisters on his hands and  aching back and legs. He completed his apprenticeship and set up his own building company after he got married.

But you can see the back yard we had. This was a single garage, and Matt had his bedroom in the back of this shed. At the very back is a large vegetable garden that provided us with lots of food, fruit trees, and plenty of grass.

 We also had a fort at the back of our house, a huge thing Peter built. The kids spent hours and hours playing here, along with numerous neighbour kids. This is a picture of Matt taking a picture of the sunset. There was a beautiful sunset that night, and Matt was into photography at the time.

When our children were small, we lived in homes with much larger sections, with enough area for the children to play, ride bikes, have a fort or play area, trees to climb etc. These days, this is missing from many modern homes. There is not room really to even throw a ball. There is a great deal of concern about our young children becoming obese, not running around enough, and spending too much time of computer games or watching tv. But when you only get a small section, what else is there for them to do? Of course you can take them to a park, enrol them in swimming lessons, or take them running, but then the parent needs to be away from home for these activities, so maybe can be done several times a week, but not every day, and certainly if there are babies or toddlers in the household, well that creates another set of problems.

New homes have a good entertaining area and Matts house has a good sized
deck out the back.

This was taken soon after they moved in. The trampoline has now gone and the
garden is well established. They do have nice trees over the back fence.

This is the other end of the section. Not much room for throwing balls,
not much room for running around etc.

 

This picture was taken a couple of years ago. On the back fence of Matts place they now have a bird feeding station. You can see the trees that are over the fence. There are many native birds around here, and lorikeets and sulphur crested cockatoos came in daily to fill up on the seeds they put out for them.

The rainbow lorikeets are very bossy birds, and rule the roost. Even a large bird like the sulphur crested cockatoos are scared of them. It was unusual to see one put up a fight against a lorikeet. Even, so, the cockatoo is ready to take off if necessary.

Of course, the reason the sections are small is due to the cost of land, so it is understandable that most families can’t afford a large area around the homes, but it is one of the downfalls of modern living.