Nineteen of Canberra's heritage homes have been caught up in the Mr Fluffy insulation crisis and will be demolished, with authorities promising strict rules to prevent McMansions springing up in their place.
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One of them belongs to Mary Hutchison and her partner of 30 years Maureen Cummuskey.
While Dr Hutchison is resigned to the massive community upheaval caused by Mr Fluffy, she does find it a little ironic that her home is the only one of O'Connor's iconic Tocumwal houses scheduled for demolition.
Not only does she have a personal love for the style and aesthetics of a Tocumwal, but as a public historian Dr Hutchison created the Tocumwal Archive of historic photos and personal stories which together document the unique place these houses have in Canberra's suburban narrative.
She admits the day the bulldozers arrive on her street will be one of both deep personal and professional sadness.
According to the ACT Heritage Council, 18 of the ACT's 19 heritage homes impacted by the toxic insulation are distributed over Canberra's designated heritage precincts including the Reid Housing Precinct, Blandfordia 4 Housing Precinct in Forrest, the Forrest Housing Precinct, Corroboree Park and Wakefield Gardens Housing Precincts in Ainslie, and the Tocumwal Housing Precinct in O'Connor.
The ACT Asbestos Response Taskforce said all of these blocks would be quarantined from possible amendments to zoning regulations which would allow the majority of Mr Fluffy blocks to have the potential to be unit-titled as dual occupancies.
And the council has stipulated that any new homes built on the cleared blocks will need to meet strict guidelines so as to maintain the look and feel of the heritage precincts in which they are set.
These include meeting heritage
For a while, Dr Hutchison and Ms Cummusky settled on rebuilding. They designed a solar-passive and sustainable home that looked, from the outside, almost identical to the one they were replacing. But anxiety over how much the land would cost to buy back, their desire to avoid a mortgage, and the thought of having to wait possibly years before the new home was completed saw them make the heart-wrenching decision to move. They desperately searched for another Tocumwal for sale before deciding they could renovate a slightly younger home in Hacket to suit their needs.
Dr Hutchison said she was both pleased and relieved to see the ACT Government agree to quarantine heritage precincts from the proposed rezoning provisions.
And she hoped checks and balances enforced by the Heritage Council would protect streets such as hers from inconsistent rebuilds.
ACT Asbestos Response Taskforce head Andrew Kefford said the taskforce recognised the historical and cultural significance these homes had to the city and their important aesthetic place within streets of significance.
Before each of the homes is deconstructed and demolished it will be photographed and extensively archived by a heritage specialist. No building materials will be salvageable due to contamination concerns.
Meanwhile, a further eight heritage properties have been identified which have Mr Fluffy contamination. These include the first-floor roof of a vacant part part of the Ainslie shops, two dwellings on blocks which have been identified to have Aboriginal heritage significance and five dwellings within heritage precincts where the dwellings are not though to contribute to the heritage significance of the precinct.
With the exception of the Ainslie shops - which is still under a WorkSafe prohibition order and has not been addressed by the taskforce in its home demolition program - the dwellings will also be demolished and quarantined from rezoning.
Mr Kefford said there was an understanding right from the start of the demolition program that heritage blocks would need to be quarantined.
"With the significant reach of this issue affecting 1021 houses across 56 of our established suburbs, it is inevitable that houses in heritage areas would be affected.
"We recognise the importance of heritage areas to the fabric of our community's history and in ensuring rebuilding is undertaken in a way which is sympathetic to the area."
The taskforce consulted with the heritage council very early on. "They agreed they would not object to the demolitions and we agreed there would be no special planning permissions attached to those blocks. The council will also have a close interest in what gets rebuilt."
The council will offer free architectural and conservation advice to all Mr Fluffy owners wishing to rebuild, and people who bought cleared blocks would be subject to existing heritage guidelines for the area and type of new construction. New home plans would be assessed by the council on a case-by-case basis.
Mr Kefford said he understood a number of heritage home owners affected by Mr Fluffy were actively considering rebuilding on their blocks.
What is a Tocumwal?
Take a drive down certain cul-de-sacs in O'Connor and you will return in time to the 1940s. Clusters of quaint metal-roofed homes with distinctive board cladding halfway up their walls are an homage to recycling. The homes were part of a cunning disguise to house troops at the Tocumwal Air Force base in New South Wales, which was built during the Second World War as an inland defence against Japanese invasion. As camouflage, the sleeping quarters for air force personnel were built in the form of houses. And after the War, when Canberra was gripped by an acute housing shortage, the homes became a ready solution and were loaded on trucks and relocated.
According to the Tocumwal Archive, about 200 of them were transported from the late 1940s to the growing suburbs of Ainslie and O'Connor. In O'Connor they were located in two groups of four cul-de-sacs meeting at a central park and bounded by Macarthur, Macpherson, Miller and Tate Streets. The area is listed as a heritage precinct.
