A Shedentary Life
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday July 5, 1993
EVERY Saturday and Sunday morning, thousands of Australian men (and who knows, maybe a few women as well) tuck the transistor radio under the arm and head down through the wilds of the backyard, past the Hills Hoist, to the shed.
There, surrounded by nails and sawdust, or rakes and potting mix, or whatever makes up their excuse for privacy, they leave the rest of the world behind them.
What strange and inscrutable twist of genetics has led to the male urge to retreat to the shed, or to its kindred spirits, the garage and workshop?
Perhaps the answer lies in the past. Sheds have a continuing role in our mythology - leaving aside the fact that Jesus Christ was born in one - and the odds are that by adulthood, the average Australian male will have come into contact with the concept of the shed many times.
There's the cubby house, a shed writ small where toddlers first embrace that inner feeling of strength in solitude.
Then, by school age, the young boy's fantasies turn to the type of activities that go on behind the bike sheds. Or, for the more sporty, between visits to the dressing sheds.
And how many bad folk songs and bush poems will the growing student have to suffer about shearing sheds?
Sheds are everywhere. It's a well-known fact that Thomas Edison designed the electric bulb because his backyard workshop had a natural light problem; that Monet painted Water Lilies even while it rained, from the dry safety of his garden cabana; and that Ben Chifley saw the light on the hill through a small rectangular shed window.
My own father disappeared every weekend to the garage, like clockwork, emerging only when enticed by lunch or by tea and biscuits. Why do men do it, I pondered? What could possibly explain this domestic exodus? This mini-migration? I rang my mother and asked.
"I think you're looking at the notion of space," she said.
"As your children grow larger and larger, you have less and less space, so he created his own space. If you go back to the old notion that she controls the inside of the house and he controls the outside, well, your father was not interested in controlling the outside. Therefore, he had to make a third place.
"When I would come home in the afternoon and he would be down there putting timber through a saw, I always knew he'd had a rough day. So it was a tension release as well, a socially acceptable and productive one. If he hadn't had a bad day, he'd be flat on his back watching the television.
"It's the same sort of things as females cleaning out cupboards or banging carpets or doing some violent physical activity to get rid of what had built up."
Parents. Are they permanently wise or what? But let's not just take Mum's word for it.
Graeme Russell, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University, says the shed urge, for want of a better phrase (sheddiction?), is part of a general behavioural pattern which allows males to retain their personal space and leisure time requirements in the context of the family, usually more successfully than women.
"Women do have an equal need for personal space," he says. "It gets down to a perception of whose responsibility things are and who has a right to it. Men argue that they need to have that kind of space because of the hassles of their paid work and family life. It goes back to the perceptions of traditional roles.
"I don't want to fall into the trap of totally stereotyping it, but in a lot of families, what happens in the house is more likely to be controlled by women, whether they want to do that or not. It's just a pattern that develops. Under those circumstances, you can see how a bloke might want to develop his own identity and his own space in the context of his home environment. I can understand that. It just doesn't turn me on."
Well, me either, but who knows, maybe it's a dormant gene. Maybe the urge comes on us later in life. Maybe the sawdust receptors in our DNA don't kick in until a certain point.
Dr Ann McGrath, a historian at the University of NSW, sees the retreat to the shed as inextricably bound with masculinity, and the ways in which we express ourselves.
"The shed is constituted as men's space and men see it as their domain, in with the lawn mower and the tools and the other masculine artefacts," she says. "Men can retreat to get away from the children and the noise. (Sheditation?)
"I suppose things are changing, but generally, the kitchen, and the domain of food, is seen as relating to women.
"Women use food as a solace. Or else they starve themselves anorexic as a protest. Women's protest is often food-related. That means they don't have to leave the children neglected, whereas the man can just cut himself off from the kids and the home space, and do it in the garage and shed.
"It's also interesting to note that Xavier Herbert didn't write in his home. When he wrote Poor Fellow My Country, he wrote in the garage out the back. I think that was associated with his idea that even though he was a writer, which might be seen as an effeminate thing to be, he was in the male domain while he was doing it, in a garage surrounded by tools and machinery. I think it's symbolic - he was obsessed by his masculinity and asserting it."
For those of us who have thought of houses as family areas, it's interesting to encounter the notion of personal spaces, of territoriality, within those boundaries.
Bruce Eeles, an architect, has just designed a shed-type building for a Sydney woman. OK, it's an artist's studio, but the function is more or less the same and it's at the end of the back yard.
Maybe, if architects are getting in on it, the day of the designer shed is at hand.
"It's probably our only experience of that, someone wanting a separate little pavilion down in the back yard," Eeles admits.
"I've always thought it was a good idea. In certain buildings, it can make a courtyard space. You can enclose the garden rather than just having it as an appendage out the back. You make it more of an urban garden, with buildings on two ends of it, fences down the two other sides."
Eeles says the concept of retreats within the house has been around for a while - some people have studies, some have sheds - but could be about to become more important.
"Families are different now. One doesn't necessarily design for the nuclear family any more," he explains.
"You've often got combined families with children from two or more relationships or marriages. There are people living in groups in sharehouse accommodation. The need for personal retreat space is probably greater."
So as housing gets more expensive and the family changes, the shed may be due for a renaissance?
"Using it as a euphemism for the retreat, the quiet space, yes," he agrees. "Perhaps architects now have to plan for a hierarchy of retreat and communal spaces.
"There were books written about this back in the '60s, (about the need) to make a definite distinction between the bedrooms or the private spaces and the communal rooms or living spaces.
"The ideas have been around, but it takes a long while for people to catch on."
BE PREPARED for the fact that if you want to start shed shopping, the task will turn out to be as big as you want it to be.
Robert Smith, who is manager of Treco Storage Systems, Australia's largest manufacturer and exporter of sheds, says there are no accurate figures on the industry size - due to the large number of small manufacturers in the market -but estimates that the retail value may be as high as $40 million.
Smith says sheds, due to their adaptability, are a commercial perennial, with most people buying them to put in the backyard. But there is an increased need for small storage sheds "for town houses and home units".
The manufacturers are eternally flexible, so be prepared for a bewildering variety of options.
Sure, you could head for a department store or major hardware outlet and pick up the first kit you see, but you could, as would befit such a major life decision, also drag the process out for months, comparing catalogues, materials and options.
There are 22 designs in the Treco range alone, each with a variety of available dimensions. Treco makes its sheds out of BHP Zincalume and Colorbond steel, with prices varying from $159 to $749.
Then there are the optional extras: window kits, skylights, anchor bolts, concrete pavers, storage shelf kits, doughnut makers (woops, off into fantasy there).
Smith's advice to prospective buyers is to consider the structural soundness of different makes. Look for sufficient framing, roof beams, and solid fasteners. Think about the role of colour versus zincalume.
Despite the fanciful pretensions of this article, not all sheds are used for escape. George McDonald, of Alexander McDonald Pty Ltd (Castle Hill, Blacktown), says about 75 per cent of those he sells are for storage use only, with the rest being taken by hobbyists, crafts people and handyfolk.
Alexander McDonald sells Treco and Advance sheds (heavy-duty walls, handmade and able to be changed to customer's specifications) from 1.8m x 1.2m up to 6m x 3m. In zincalume, the cost range is $155-$695. In Colorbond, the range is $159-$1,500.
It also stocks a range of upmarket cedar-panelled sheds, from $585 for the no frills Tecoma (1.9m x 1.2m x 2.25m, no floor, no windows) to $2,265 for the Gembrook (2.5m x 3.6m x 2.35m, four windows, floor). Options include lockable door handles, skylight ridge capping and additional windows.
Charges for delivery and installation are extra.
JOHN Shoemark, 31, soon to be a father for the first time, has just moved house. He and his long-suffering wife, Robyn, have found a new home in Haberfield. With a shed.
What have you put in it?
"Tools," he says excitedly. "Lots of tools, lots of wood. Generally, things my wife will never keep in the house. Anything dirty, engine parts, general refuse I pick up on the streets, things I find in dump bins."
You said that you don't retreat to the shed, that just as often you are banished.
"That's right. I do get banished. I get told to go and play with my toys, usually whenever I'm annoying (Robyn) by showing her what amusing new things I have created while she's trying to watch the soaps."
So what do you put the urge to own a shed down to?
"A need for my own space, somewhere I'm totally in control. I always know where I have put my own tin of nails."
Do you dream of one day owning a mega-shed?
"Enormous, yes. I want a three-cargarage-sized shed. Big enough to have all the power tools in the world that I could ever want."
Given that you work six long days and don't have a lot of free time, how much are you in the shed?
"Three to five hours a week, about half my disposable time."
And how much of that is spent in productive, worthwhile activity?
"Probably none of it," he laughs. "You go down, listen to the radio, play with a bit of wood, move things around.
"The good thing about a shed is that you can move things around and you know that next week, when you go back, they will still be there. They won't have been tidied up.
"And you don't have to tidy up your shed for guests. The only people that want to go into your shed are other shed devotees."
© 1993 Sydney Morning Herald