Australia says Farewell to the quarter-acre Backyard

It used to be every Australian’s dream to own a house on a quarter-acre block in the suburbs, surrounded by a white picket fence, with a big yard containing a swimming pool and barbecue area. Families lived outdoors for much of the year, eating, playing and entertaining.

But the backyard, an icon of Australian suburbia, is under threat according to an article in the Independent. Tony Hall, a Queensland academic said that sprawling single-storey homes had become the norm in Australia, swallowing up the outside space once proudly occupied by the backyard.

Professor Hall studied aerial photographs as well as measurements of homes and residential blocks noticed a dramatic change had taken place during the 1990s with houses now extending right to the boundary of blocks, leaving little room outdoors. His research suggests that backyards have been shrinking for years, with population pressures reducing the size of blocks and creating higher-density housing. In inner-city areas, the most common outdoor space is a tiny paved courtyard.

The backyard, once a symbol of Middle Australia, traditionally contained a lawn, a sandpit, a garden shed, a vegetable patch and a Hills Hoist – a distinctive locally designed clothes dryer. It was a place where kids played cricket and rode their bikes, while their parents supped beer in the shade with friends and neighbours.

Professor Hall said that while urban sprawl was common to many countries, Australia was losing its backyards faster than most. The only exception he found was Adelaide, where people were still building houses with plenty of outdoor space.

Despite its image as a land of wide open spaces, Australia is one of the world’s most urbanised countries, with the bulk of the population squeezed into the seven coastal cities.