The Beulah Shed

Bula is one of our Endangered Houses fund projects. It's an approach to conservation that Sydney Living Muse Each of the projects that we've taken on has had quite significant challenges in terms of the state of dilapidation of a One of the approaches we're taking with Bula is to try to work out how to do a modern addition to the building w So in order to be able to start work on the house we've had to concentrate on the reconstruction of the access road and the reconstruction of the bridge for modern ve We bought property in 2010 and knew all along that because there's no road access in at that stage that we would have to rebuild the road and bridge. The bridge is believed to still be the oldest bridge on mainland Australia and private property. There is still conjecture about the date it was built. There's contradictory evidence about whether it was built in the 1830s or 1850s but even if you take the 1850s it'still probably the oldest bridge. We're trying to conserve the original fabric of the place but also to adapt it so that it's able to be used for modern purposes. So t So it's designed for a modern load of 13. 5 metric tonnes we looked at flying a new structure over the entire old bridge to save the original fabric but it was decided that would actually damage the original fabric even more than getting rid of it. So we ended up reverting to an idea of as now pretty much rebuilding it When we first arrived it was basically an old overgrown bush track. Some clearing had taken place by others with some felling of trees but essentially it was a dirt bush track with a lot of sandstone and there were some There's an archaeologist here as we pulled away the original timber beams and bearers and stripped back the topsoil. We found more of the original decking and bearers extending through into the abutments but not Being a significant value the old sandstone there we've actually wrapped the existing causeway with some geofabric and plywood just as a buffer for any falling formwork old sandstone, concrete, any of the materials that will The next stage was forming concrete head balls on top of the abutments. So equipment here to form those on site. There's approximately three tons of steel reinforcing steel in the under the concrete, vol 6 cubic meters. Then the large preformed concrete bearers w So these are basically the plates at the beams will be sitting on just got a rubber pad with a polystyrene and sitting on the stainless steel plate w So the same n So we've pre-drilled, canner sunk and we've cams out every single anchor into the beams w You can see here we've actually installed the handrail now. In the four years that I've been coming up with property the creek has never been beyond a trickle. One of our neighbours it was the south who has lived on the property for her life had told us she had memories of the creek rising and sort of flowing rapidly but were starting to t We've got the phone called the day of the storms. The day it was the water rising all the way to basically the underside of those of the timber beam here and it was just pus Oh it's been fantastic seeing it finally come to fruition after over three years of planning for it. It's been a pleasure to work on somet I t