Dwelling - 6 Richards Street

Statement of Significance

Aesthetic Value – Importance for the aesthetic character created by the individual components that collectively form a significant precinct.
Historic Value – Importance in relation to an event, phase or activity of historic importance in the locality.

Physical Description

A fine uninterrupted example of A-type governmental housing used to house NASA Tracking Station workers under the first town housing scheme.

History

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Tracking Station was constructed at Carnarvon in 1964. Shire councillors raised a motion in 1963 that the Shire build the required houses to house the Tracking Station workers and their families with the costs to be amortised over 12 years. The final agreement also provided for compensation in the case of premature closure of the Station. However potential station contractors were still expecting to be responsible for family housing as well as single accommodation. At the end of February 1963, the Council submitted the housing scheme to the State Government for its approval. The Council planned twenty smaller £4750 B-type homes on land between Whitlock and McLeod Streets and ten ‘better quality’ £6000 A-type homes on an extension of West Street. The Council abandoned the SHC location when the Lands Department agreed to the cancellation of the Richard Street Recreation Reserve, an old rubbish site adjacent to the Pioneer Cemetery, to use it as the site for the twenty smaller homes. Tenders were called for the construction of the 30 houses in ‘two lots of 15 houses’. Ten houses were to be complete by the end of July and the rest by the end of November. Local builders protested that they could not possibly complete a batch of 15 houses inside the time required. A special meeting of the Council amended the tender to encourage local responses. Forty-four tenders were received. The contract was awarded to Jaxon Construction of Perth for £139,830 for all thirty houses - within the price limits agreed by NASA. The ‘cream on the cake’ occurred earlier when Department of Supply, the leaser, offered the Council an additional weekly payment for it to be responsible for the maintenance of its own houses. By mid-April, work on filling and levelling the sites had already commenced. The Council suspended its normal works program with all available plant assigned to the housing project. But in June there were survey problems fitting the smaller homes onto their blocks; the housing project committee was worried that “…because of the international significance of the NASA space project, delays at Carnarvon could bring discredit to the Town, the State, and Australia generally.” Their anxiety increased with wet weather throughout June and July causing a two-month delay in roadwork construction and block filling. The Council overcame the delays. The first three Tracker families took up residence in mid-September. All homes were complete by 17 October, six weeks ahead of schedule. It had taken only eight months from the Council’s decision to ‘go ahead’ to the completion of the thirty houses, and just five months after awarding the contract. The three-bedroom timber-frame fibro houses had storm-battened asbestos roofs for cyclonic weather. Designed for a hot climate, they were also fitted with ventilation louvers, fly screens on all windows, ceiling fans in all rooms, electric stoves and electric hot water systems. By December, AWA, the station contractor, had enclosed the laundries, then a year after the first arrivals the Council approved plans for closing in the front verandas to provide an extra ‘room’; both at no cost to the Town. A few months later, NASA announced a planned expansion of the Station for the Apollo program with the Council agreeing to give DoS an option to increase the total housing requirement (from the 34 already approved) up to a maximum of 50 by notification prior to 30 June 1965. The next housing project, off Babbage Island Road, would use a more-desirable modified A-type plan.

Integrity/Authenticity

High/Medium

Condition

Good

Creation Date

Publish place record online (inHerit):

Last Update

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