Bargain of the week Two-bed, weatherboarded cottage close to the station in Charing, £175,000, with stevenjmooreestateagents.co.uk.co.uk
Pull back the curtains of this one-bedroom, weatherboarded cottage and you have endless views of open fields and the orchard from which the property takes its name.
The 19th-century style weatherboarded summer houses took a beating, but survived - around 4,000 such buildings remain and many have now been restored.
A walk round Allira's township, where 16% of people are unemployed, shows run down weatherboard houses, battered and rusted cars and piles of rubbish in gardens.
Clapboard, also called weatherboard, bevel siding, or lap siding, type of board bevelled toward one edge, used to clad the exterior of a frame building.
Areas with more precipitation that have been settled since 1850, chiefly the northwest, the northeast, and the Huon River valley region, generally had small farms, buildings mostly of weatherboard, and houses and villages mainly aligned narrowly along roads.
Most are single family homes with two to four bedrooms; the most common styles are the weatherboard-clad bungalows built in the first half of the 20th century and the brick or stucco townhouses with tiled roofs.
As the bus rattled along the hilly, narrow roads one recent Saturday, past properties ranging from simple, weatherboard-clad beach houses to large, modern homes, the driver was joking.
It was old with a wrinkled feel the way the weatherboards had peeled and twisted.
So I settled on a simple weatherboard house in the country I knew, no job, and no idea how to sustain a life – just a knowingness that said if I had stayed where I was I would fade like a cushion in the sun.
