Let’s be honest. When you think of a Ballarat builder, you might picture a stoic figure in a high-vis vest, nodding sagely over a set of blueprints, a faint scent of sawdust and determination lingering in the air and you’re not entirely wrong but after twenty years of laying foundations and lifting roof trusses in this glorious, weather beaten city, I am here to tell you that the job description involves far more than just bricks and mortar. It is part psychologist, part archaeologist and full time connoisseur of questionable client supplied morning tea biscuits.
My world is one of sensory overload and it starts at 7 AM. There is the particular gritty sense of cold morning air mixing with the quality, white powder of concrete dust that coats the lower back of your throat. It is the unmistakable thwump-rip of a nail gun using into hardwood, a sound that echoes satisfyingly thru the skeleton of a brand new domestic. It is the smell—oh, the smell—a unique cocktail of fresh cut Victorian ash timber (a scent so good they should bottle it), the acrid tang of welding from the roofing team and the inevitable ghostly aroma of a meat pie that someone had for lunch three days ago, still haunting the temporary porta-loo.
We Ballarat builders are a special breed. We do not just build houses; we build fortresses designed to withstand our famously dynamic climate. One minute, the sun is blazing down on a heritage home renovation in Wendouree and you’re sweating onto the original bluestone footings. The next, a hailstorm the size of marbles is ricocheting off the steel roof of a new custom home in Alfred ton, creating a din so loud you has to abandon all hope of conversation. We build for four seasons in a day because in Ballarat, that’s not a saying; it’s a Tuesday.
A huge part of our work is heritage home renovation. Now, that is in which the archaeologist identify earns its maintain. You never recognize what you may discover once you peel back the layers. I actually have determined newspapers from 1898 crammed in a wall for insulation (the headlines had been fantastically familiar: Local Council in Disarray Over Road works), stunning untouched tessellated tiles hiding below three layers of linoleum and melancholy and as soon as a unmarried perfectly preserved leather shoe. Why one shoe? Did the 19th century owner have a terrible cobbler related incident and simply board over the evidence? We speculate about these things over our smoko breaks. It is these projects that demand a Ballarat builder with a delicate touch someone who knows how to rewire a Victorian terrace without it looking like a spaghetti junction and who can match a corbel with the reverence of an art restorer.
But it is not all historical detective work. The surge in new custom home construction on the city’s fringes is where clients’ dreams and our reality checks collide. This is where I transition into my position as an unofficial psychologist.
I will by no means forget about the couple who desired a totally retractable ground of their residing room to reveal a koi pond underneath. For ambience, they said. I had to gently explain that while ambience is great, the combined weight of their three seater leather sofa and Uncle Barry during Christmas lunch would create a koi-pocalypse of biblical proportions. We compromised with a very nice water feature next to the house.
Then there are the specific, sensory details clients fixate on. I have had a two hour meeting about the hand feel of a particular door handle. I’ve been asked if the grout color for the bathroom tiles will elevate their morning mindfulness. (I suggested a nice beige and told them it was called Serene Dawn. It was just beige.)
And the biscuits! If I were to write a socio-economic guide to Ballarat based solely on client provided snacks, it would be a bestseller, the grand heritage renovation in Ballarat East, artisanal shortbread from a local bakery presented on a proper plate. The first home build in Sebastopol? A bulk pack of generic cream biscuits that have a structural integrity slightly lower than the foam insulation we’re using. We eat them all with gratitude, of course. It’s the law.
Speaking of first home builds, this is where the magic is most palpable. There’s nothing quite like handing over the keys to a young couple seeing their finished house for the first time. You see them noticing the way the afternoon light, that particular golden Ballarat light, streams through the window we spent half a day leveling perfectly. They run their palms over the clean bench tops and smell that intoxicating new-residence heady scent of paint, smooth carpet and possibility. In those moments, you are not just a builder; you’re a key holder to the subsequent bankruptcy of a person’s existence. It nearly makes up for the time you spent on your palms and knees inside the dust, trying to find a particular screw you dropped.
Of path, no dialogue of a residential production venture in our town is complete without a nod to our unofficial mascot: the wind. It whips throughout the plains from Bunning, stealing hats, sending insulation bats cursing like fluffy red clouds and trying out the structural integrity of every transient fence we erect. A Ballarat builder does no longer ask if it is windy; he asks how windy. Is it a hold onto your paperwork wind or the portaloo is now tumbleweed wind? We build to withstand it, anchoring our creations deep into the earth because we know what is coming.
So, the next time you drive past a building site and see us, covered in a fine layer of Ballarat’s best soil, shouting over the whine of a circular saw, know that there’s more going on. We’re problem solvers, dream weavers and historians with cordless drills. We are navigating a minefield of client aspirations, heritage regulations and biscuit based morale. We are Ballarat builders and we are building the future of this beautiful blustery city.
