How Colleen and Ted Hood handmade 10,000 bricks to build their Murwillumbah home in the 1950s

Peter Hood with one of the thousands of bricks constructed by his parents using the Truline brick-maker. (ABC North Coast: Hannah Ross)

For Peter Hood, the memory of his parents inhabits every one of the bricks used to build his home in northern New South Wales.

From 1953 until 1955, his parents handmade more than 10,000 bricks to construct the house, which still sits solidly on its suburban block in East Murwillumbah.

It would not have been an easy process in post-war Australia, as the nation struggled with a shortage of labour and raw materials.

Just as young people today are finding it hard to get a foot on the property ladder, Peter’s parents, Colleen and Ted, weighed up their options and took matters into their own hands — literally.

They embraced their DIY house with the help of a hand-operated, brickmaking machine that had been languishing in Colleen’s father’s shed.

“They were both good workers and I think they would have just knuckled down and got into it,” Peter said.

The couple patiently used their ration coupons to buy two bags of cement each month to feed into their Truline Manual Brickmaker, until they had enough to build themselves a home.

The machine, manufactured and patented by the Truline Brick Machine Company in Sydney in 1946, came with an instruction manual that suggests its target market was building novices, just like Colleen and Ted.

“Follow the instructions carefully and the operation of the machine will be found quite simple,” the manual reads.

“A good first-class brick can be made by using five parts sand or similar material, to one part cement.”

That’s what friends are for

Chances are, if you were a friend of the Hoods in the early 1950s, you would have been encouraged to use your own coupons for cement to contribute to the project.

Peter said most visitors to the house site were prevailed upon to pitch in and knock out a few bricks.

When Colleen wrote down her recollections for posterity in 2015, she gave an insight into how members of the community in Murwillumbah were helping each other out at the time.

“As building materials were still scarce … one of the local builders borrowed a couple of hundred bricks while he was waiting to get some to finish a job. We were a little worried about lending them but all was well and the bricks returned.”

Colleen and Ted worked on their house between raising Peter’s older brother and going to work — Ted for transport companies in town and Colleen at the local supermarket.

During this time, they lived on-site in a shed that now serves as a carport.

But amid the sweat and dirt, Colleen found a creative outlet.

“It was an exciting time deciding on the plan for our home,” Colleen wrote in her memoir.

“As we walked round we would be looking at houses getting ideas.”

Peter said design details, such as art deco-style curved exterior walls and a round porthole window, would most likely have been dreamed up by his mother in collaboration with Ted’s friend, Jock Forsyth, who was — fortuitously  — a bricklayer by trade.

Jock also happened to be building his own house in town so, on weekends, the men alternated working on each other’s properties.

At the Hoods’ home, Jock saw fit to run the foundations for each room to the ground, rather than rely on stumps and bearers for the subfloor.

They were not prepared to skimp on the number of bricks required either — opting to make more than 10,000 so they could build double-brick walls, which remain in perfect condition today.

“They did have a lot of help from friends and family, particularly Mum’s father,” Peter said.

The house was finished in time for Peter’s birth and he was brought home from hospital to his parents new home.

He moved back in four years ago to care for his mum in the months before she moved into a nursing home, and then he bought the property from her.

Homemade history

The story behind the Hoods’ house and the Truline brickmaker used to build it are featured in a new exhibition at the Tweed Regional Museum in Murwillumbah.

Museum director Molly Green said the story spoke volumes about community ingenuity.

“I think it tells a really interesting story about resilience and where we have come from in such a short period of time,” she said.

“It makes us think about where and how we source the materials that we use for life today and just how different that is [from previous generations].

“A lot of hard work and sweat went into these houses that we drive past every day now.”

Days of the designer kit home

Architecture professor and host of Grand Designs Australia, Anthony Burke, said the idea of building your own home was popular in post-war Australia.

“It was not uncommon to have your mates around on a weekend, spend all day building the house and then put a keg on in the afternoon to pay everyone for their time,” Professor Burke said.

He said architects were keen to facilitate this movement, including renowned mid-century architect Robin Boyd, who created a series of plans that aspirational home builders could buy over the counter from department stores.

“You could take it away and basically put together most of it yourself,” he said.

Professor Burke said this approach had become less common as building became more specialised, legislated and regulated.

But, he said, the tables were turning back in favour of DIY and pre-fabricated homes as people looked for more affordable ways to get a roof over their heads.

This allowed people to form a much closer connection to their home, but it could be a difficult process, he warned.

“Houses today are far more complex than they were back then, and that makes it far more difficult for the average Joe to lean into a build project,” he said.

Professor Burke advised anyone considering building a home to get as much advice as possible before even attempting to lay the first brick.

As for Peter, he said it was nice to be back in the home his parents built and he often reflected on their tenacity in the years before he was born.

“Living here, I do think about them,” he said.