Tim the Yowie Man: The sunken houses of Lake George

The McLauchlans spotted the first curious construction while geocaching at Lake George, near Bungendore, and the second while enjoying a Sunday drive on the other side of the enigmatic lake, near Collector.

Had the inquisitive duo discovered top-secret trial locations for Cockington Green's latest miniature model houses or had they uncovered the hideaways for a covert community of vertically challenged farmers?

This week, in an attempt to determine the true origins of these sunken houses, your akubra-clad columnist hopped in the Yowie mobile and followed in the dusty tracks of the McLauchlans to the ancient shores of Lake George.

"It looked like it was half hidden by a hill but the geocaching app described it as a shrunken house rising out of the lake bed so we had to explore.

"It was really strange, it was just like half the house was in the ground, including the inside."

Conor was especially intrigued by a decrepit kangaroo skeleton in the house's inner sanctum. "We couldn't work out if it went in to die or was placed there," Yvonne says.

The McLauchlans aren't the first readers to report this striking structure, and a bit of digging by this column reveals that it was actually an entry for the art competition at the 2010 Weereewa (indigenous name for Lake George) Festival.

Made from brick, iron and timber, the sunken house, or its official name Sands of Time, was the brainchild of sculptor Dave Argaet, and it ended up claiming first prize.

Despite its sturdy appearance, Argaet, a Bungendore-based stonemason who dabbles in landscape art, reveals that "it only took my son, my daughter and a few mates a couple of days to build it".

Argaet says "working on the lake bed near dusk was bloody eerie".

"Just on sunset we all felt a bit weird, a sense of dread, so we packed up and came back the next morning,'' recalls Argaet, explaining, "many of people have died on that lake."

Unfortunately, since its construction the lake bed surrounding Sands of Time has been mainly dry, but Argaet lives in hope that one day the lake will fill up and it will "finally become a genuine sunken house".

Meanwhile, the folk at the nearby Silver Wattle Quaker Centre report "many of our visitors arrive perplexed as to the origins of the little house"

The centre's director Sheila Keane explains that "when the festival was over, while all the other art installations were removed from the lake bed, Silver Wattle granted permission for the sculpture to remain".

How the kangaroo skeleton found its way into the house remains a mystery.

This "sunken house" is also on private property and the remains of a substantial chimney alongside it provides a clue to its origins.

According to Gary Poile of Collector, the land originally belonged to Henry Rabjohn, a British Army Sergeant who in the early 1800s managed a gang of convicts working on the extensive Winderadeen pastoral run, just south of present-day Collector.

"When Rabjohn retired they gave him this land in appreciation of his service," reports Poile, whose great grandmother was Rabjohn's daughter.

"There was a much bigger house on the site, but a fire burned it down around 1930," explains Poile. "Afterwards they used roofing iron to build a small hut which eventually became a hay shed.

"One day the owner took the hay out and a few days later the shed just folded over," reports Poile, who says while the roof still keeps things dry underneath, the shed is not habitable in any way.

"Well, not unless you are a snake," he deadpans.

If you go: Both these "sunken houses" are on private property and without express permission of the landowners should only be viewed from afar. The best vantage spot to check out "Sands of Time" is about 10 kilometres along Lake Road (which runs off Bungendore Road). The Collector house is located about 1.5 kilometres on the village side of the Collector Road if driving towards Gunning.

Did You Know? Gary Poile has an antique wooden chaise lounge, a circa-1840 heirloom of the Rabjohns, which although he claims, "is an ugly looking thing", is unable to part with "because of the family history." This week he dusted it off for this photograph.

"There certainly has been an explosion of interest lately, most noticeably in Australia," says Jules Bray of Smartdeck, a Mitchell building company which has moved into the design and construction of tiny houses.

As an indication of the popularity (and also possibly their ease of transport) of tiny houses, late last year Smartdeck's $20,000 prototype was stolen from out the front of its Mitchell shopfront, and thankfully recovered by police several days later in Queensland.

Since the theft Smartdeck has been besieged with Canberrans wanting to buy one of the houses.

"We haven't started to take orders yet," says Bray who hopes to soon have the recovered prototype completely fitted-out and available for inspection outside their Kembla Court showroom.

"A large amount of interest has come from divorced women over 50 years of age who have been left with little super and are looking for something they can live in on a cheap block down the coast or as a granny flat in the children's back yards," explains Bray.

Last week, while cleaning up her local creek, Antia Brademann of Cooma got a little more than she bargained for.

The Cooma Waterwatch coordinator, whose group has been cleaning up the Cooma Creek for six years, was alarmed to discover a "three-toed claw protruding from the mud in a section just downstream of the town's swimming pool".

With fellow volunteers looking on, Brademann carefully plucked the curious claw out of the mud. "At first, I was concerned what might be on the end of it," she reports.

"It made me think about how the fossilised bones of a diprotodont were once found nearby when they were digging a well behind the ANZ Bank."

Fortunately for Brademann she hadn't uncovered evidence of some long-lost Monaro monster, the curious discovery turning out to be a plastic prop, probably from a Halloween costume.

While other rubbish collected from the creek ended up in the bin, Brademann says "the claw was promptly snapped up by a colleague who plans to position it in an appropriate place in their front garden".

Heck, Cooma posties beware!

For this column's loyal band of Snowy Mountain readers, on April 5, Brademann will be hosting a meeting for the community to discuss what can be done to further improve the water quality of the town's creeks.

The meeting will be held at the Snowy Monaro Regional Council Chambers from 5.30pm-7pm. No word whether the claw will make an appearance.

Cryptic Clue: Mystery tank in "growing" area of our city

Degree of difficulty: Medium

Congratulations to Justin Watson of Kaleen who was the first reader to correctly identify last week's photo, sent in by Glenn Schwinghamer, as the old Nissen Hut opposite the Kambah Woolshed in Springbett Street.

"A Nissen Hut is a pre-fabricated steel structure designed by Major Peter Norman Nissen during the First World War for military use and is also well-known for being migrant hostel accommodation in multiple states of Australia," reports Schwinghamer. "Their use in a rural context is demonstrated by this one, which was first used as a hayshed on "Kambah", Sim Bennet's property."

According to Schwinghamer, there was a fire in the hayshed in Bennet's time but it survived and has been put to community use in the urban history of Tuggeranong it's currently used by amateur theatre groups for storage of sets and costumes and is administered by Arts ACT.

If you are aware of other Nissen Huts still in use, please let me know.

How to enter: Email your guess, along with your name and address, to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday March 17, 2018 will win a double pass to Dendy.