Compressed Earth Bricks
The WCC initiated the development and construction of buildings using compressed earth bricks, because the WSC was to be constructed using this material. In turn such a building material has inherent in it, several layers of meaning for Aboriginal people.
Firstly, it represents the concept of mother earth to Aboriginal people. Secondly, as a building material it provides physical links to the other elements of the natural world such as traditional country and flora. Thirdly, the compressed earth construction brick represents the idea of rebuilding culture – one brick at a time but always reaching higher. Fourthly, it represents the fact that Aboriginal people ‘hear the pain of the country’ in it's present anguished state.
The compressed earth bricks represent a 40,000 year old culture integrated into a modern society through an infastructure.
The compressed earth bricks symbolise a generic cultural view in aboriginal Australia in that we believe, through dream time stories, that we were put on this earth to be custodians of the land, to nurture country, and that when our earthly life is no longer, we are returned to mother earth. This also symbolises that our earthly journey is completed and now our spiritual journey commences.
The powerful principles underpinning the WCC approach and manifest in developing a construction and housing enterprise have already begun to be put into practice. For example, the WCC built the first compressed earth brick building in the region for many, many years for a local horticultural company. Earth, it should be remembered, as a basic construction material, is not unknown in the wider central west of NSW.
The WCC then constructed a shed made of the same compressed earth materials for utilisation in a compost enterprise, as part of a highly innovative domestic organic waste collection and transformation project. Some other projects include; Barrick at Burcher, regional domestic housing, business organizations, and other Aboriginal groups.
Currently, the WCC is completing the unique Wiradjuri Study Centre which represents the town of Condobolin, and its wider community. This is the first serious investment activity to occur for at least twenty years.
The process of rejuvenation for local Aboriginal people is further expanded by the fact that the three buildings of the WSC and associated sites, will be constructed by teams of local Aboriginal people, based on community agreed designs and using the locally made products such as compressed earth blocks and timber, and which will be internally fitted out by furniture made locally by local Aboriginal people.
Such activities are consistent with the principles of socio-economic and environmental sustainability. The community thus becomes a part of the new beginning which the WCC envisioned.
