11, Lower back wall.

December 1997 rolls around and the rear ground floor wall nears completion. Up to this stage of construction I had been splitting and cutting other basalts, sourced close to home, intermixed with the Beeac stone with mixed success. The nearest, from the south west slopes of Mount Duneed 15 km away, proved to be too cranky and brittle with uneven texture, rather unfortunate considering its close proximity. The next closest source was from Gnarwarre, a lava flow to the east of Mount Pollock about 20km to my north west. I found its texture to be a bit fine, it was also very hard, with a large amount of quartz and seemed to have the effect of dulling or clogging the cutting edges on the diamond tipped cutting blades which I was using in a 9 inch angle grinder.
The arches over the French doors were laid using timber and chipboard formwork and are solid limestone, both inside and out. Unfortunately no photographs were taken of their construction.
Around the same time I had decided that the area below the floor toward the front of the house was wasted and I excavated the section below the central stairwell deeper to allow for the provision of a small cellar.
If you were eagle eyed enough you would also have noticed the fireplace base in the background had grown since the picture was taken in the previous post, this was to allow for the installation of a wood stove in the kitchen, an item I had overlooked in the original design.