Subtitled four friends, one block of land, no power tools, this witty account of DIY gone bush also serves as an unlikely exploration of gender in Australia. Review by Angela Welsh.
What lies behind the rugged stereotype of ‘the Australian male’? And how are bookish types – who are more interested in theatre than sport – supposed to come to grips with concepts of manliness? These and other questions are humourously considered in Richard Glover’s book, The Mud House: Four Friends, One Block of Land, No Power Tools.
Over several litres of homemade port, Glover, his best mate, Philip, and their girlfriends, Debra and Gillian, have the crazy idea to buy a block of land in country NSW and build a house from scratch. With their limited, fresh-out-of-uni budget they decide to use their own labour, and opt to piece together the house with mud bricks – free building materials made from the very earth on which the house will stand.
For countless weekends they drive up to their remote block of land in the mountainous country west of Mittagong, halfway between Sydney and Canberra. Here they set about sifting the rocky grey soil through chicken wire, then combine the (slightly) finer particles with water made from a self-dug pit. Very apt! Their first attempt leaves them hunched over, backs aching, with only a modest quota of bricks to show for it.
Glover felt that the building project was especially unlikely for him in particular. In his author-talk at Art After Hours, he noted that, “It’s almost a commonplace of adolescence that you feel you’re the odd one out. I felt that, certainly, growing up in the middle-70s in Australia. The definition of masculinity that was on offer to me wasn’t a definition that I cared for at all. It seemed to me a straightjacket that you’d pull on more than a smorgasbord of opportunities.”
During school, Glover steered away from team sports, even signing up for ballet in preference to rugby. He also threw himself into theatre. As he pointed out to the audience, Canberra Youth Theatre at the time was very much influenced by first wave feminism.
“Everything is sort of ten years later in Canberra, and it was as if Germaine Greer had just written her book!”
With performances of plays that asked the audience to reflect on the brutality of war and rape, there was uneasiness among the male actors in the theatre group towards notions of masculinity. Yet, during the construction work on the mud house, Glover learnt to reflect on the positive aspects of masculinity. He came to know the sense of accomplishment that comes through building something with his own hands – the satisfaction of “persistence, heavy lifting, and belting in a clout!”
The building project gave Govler a new perspective on that earlier time at school when everyone is trying to fit in with conceptions of gender and how to act. Glover came to the realisation that a vast majority of the Australian males in the 1970s (when he was growing up) were also outside of that 5% that made up the ocker ideal. He wondered how it was that the macho minority managed to convince the 95% that they were the odd ones out.
The mud house was a twenty-five year excursion, and there are many hilarious stories of mishaps and changes of plan along the way. The book is full of laugh-out-loud moments and leaves the reader feeling a little invested in the project too.
The Mud House by Richard Glover (HarperCollins), RRP $27.99
Review by Angela Welsh
