So why is the building called the Tomato Sauce?

In 1973, when the Aquarius Festival was held, the front of the building had Fountain Tomato Sauce ads painted on the front windows. The newcomers promply branded the building as the "Tomato Sauce Factory", and the name has stuck ever since.

Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbin, New South Wales

Originally the building was a General Store, a role now taken over by the Emporium. The front bore the words, "Pioneer Store, C J Sibley, General Storekeeper". There is a photo of the building, dated 1909, hanging on the wall of the Nimbin Bowling Club, with its original Victorian era front. In 1918 a Federation style front was added to the building, and a two storey addition made to the rear. By 1973 the building was unoccupied, and showing its age, but still looked great to us, and was used during the festival, beginning a long association between the building and the alternative community.

The photo and plan view above show the building as it was when we first arrived. In the early eighties, a big windstorm caused the front awning to collapse, and it was replaced with a simpler design shown in the photo below. Perhaps one day we'll have the means to replace it as it was.

A carpenter’s eye view

The “Tomato Sauce Building”, as we know it now, came into existence in 1918, when a new front facade and the rear two stories, were added to an existing structure.

That original building was already out of true, as evidenced by a wedge shaped spacer on the wall of the Hotel side of the building to give a vertical edge for the start of the new front facade. Dead stumps of trees cut from the original site are still under the building. Most were never removed. (One was removed though when the front foundations were replaced.)

The Nimbin Town Hall celebrates its centenary this year, but as I understand it, the only surviving piece from a hundred years ago is a square of ancient floor close to the entrance. Naturally the hall has become progressively larger over the century, and little of the original structure remains, the present facade appearing to be from the twenties or thirties. Is there an older, more intact building? Maybe. The Tomato Sauce was already in existence in 1909, and still constitutes the major part of the building.

The facade of the “Tomato Sauce” is Federation (1890 – 1918, also called Edwardian), and is almost as it was in 1918, and the floor, walls, and roof of the older centre section of the building remain. These parts of the building have the wall studs socketed into the top plate, and have no bottom plate, but go down to a bearer below the floor. There is nothing otherwise unusual or distinctive in construction, but it is typical of Victorian era timber architecture (1860 – 1890)

The original front veranda roof was replaced in the early 1980s after the original blew down in a storm.

Timber Frame building history
A short guide to old timber homes, and the years that particular styles were built..

Victorian period (1860-1890)
• No eaves and Steep rooves
• Separate Bullnose veranda roof
• Cast Lacework on verandas
• 13 foot ceilings, pressed metal or horsehair plaster
• Tessellated pathways and bathrooms (small tiles arranged in patterns)
• Elaborate decoration

Federation/Edwardian (1890 – 1918)
• Still no eaves and still steep rooves
• Separate Bullnose and Flat veranda rooves
• Timber decorative work on verandas, and above doors ("Federation" style used native plants and animals as design elements)
• 11 and 12 foot ceilings
• Less elaborate

Interwar (1918 – 1939)
• Now with eaves
• Roof less steep
• Main roof includes verandas
• Little decoration
• 9 foot ceilings
• Functional

In the early twenties angular shapes (art deco) took over from curvy shapes (art nouveau) and there are examples of this in the row of shops between the Emporium and the Rainbow. Certainly no other building in the street is as stylistically flamboyant as the Tomato Sauce.

The Museum used to have fantastic art nouveau upper leadlight feature windows, with only a damaged piece now remaining, while the rest of that group of shops have art deco feature windows. The Butchers is art deco. The Environment Centre/Apothecary (Birth & Beyond) building could be really old, but has few distinctive features. The Hall has a mixture of styles ranging from federation on. Susukka Trading is a very old building, but again, no distinctive architectural features. The Hotel has been compromised by fire control and changing safety standards. The horsehair plaster ceiling with its lyre birds is gone, the timber panelled interior now covered in fire check gyprock, the bar totally changed, besser block cold room added. The exterior is still fairly original. While it is in the Federation style, it was built in 1926.

When the Aquarius Festival arrived in 1973, the Tomato Sauce was vacant, and was taken over for the festival, later being owned by Graham Dunstan's partner Vi Tourle, and then the Community School.

When Bob Hopkins had me look at the building in 1998, it had already been viewed by others who had declined the task almost immediately, feeling it needed too much work, and was too old.

Because it was Bob that asked, I had a look.

The Problems

The front of the building was sagging on both sides. The side stumps had rotted or sunk allowing the bearers to sag below support height. The weight of the walls was being taken by the skirting board at floor level (No bottom plates, typical of era), and the floor itself was held up by the overhanging joists, which were bowing under the weight. The walls were trying to slide off the sagging joists at the centre of the Hotel side of the building. If that had happened, the roof would have collapsed, and the building lost.

The main problem had always been sinking or rotting foundations in slightly unfavourable ground. There had been previous restumpings where the results had not lasted, so the perimeter needed something better than timber stumps on pads (Seventies style) to keep it in position. The upper structure seemed otherwise fairly sound, so we set about repositioning and fastening the walls, and then restoring the building to its original height.

(After the ferociously wet Seventies our Council's foundation requirements were upgraded, requiring cyclone fixing and poured concrete footings. I think pre-cast concrete pads can now only be used to extend a structure already using them. They were not especially successful here, being prone to sinking and tilting during wet spells.)

Temporary bearers were placed under the joists and supported. Threaded rod was passed under the floor between the joists from one side of the building to the other, through the bottom weatherboards. Tightening the nuts on both sides pulled the walls properly back into place where they were then refastened.

There was a similar problem with the “balloon frame” used for the two story rear section. The same fix was employed, passing threaded rod through the building, and squeezing it back together in the centre.

The front doors were badly damaged, so local craftsman John Wright was commissioned to make a new pair from the pattern of the old ones, and these have been installed.

It was also discovered that when the new front was added to the building in 1918, the foundations for the front were achieved by fastening timber flitches to the original front row of stumps, and filling the space between that and the footpath with sand and broken glass (?) There was a new row of wooden stumps at the front, which were then almost immediately encased in mortar to give the appearance of a solid front foundation. They had also been dressed up and added to on many occasions. When removed, the spaces where the stumps had been were empty cavities. The front had been resting on mortar and sand alone for some time.

This was when "Wick" (an older local) told us that the front had been a quick tart up of an older building in 1918 in order to sell it in 1919. So when was that original older section built, certainly before 1909, but how long before? It would be nice to know.

The front of the building was excavated, and a 10 metre long reinforced 750mm * 750mm concrete girder was poured under the front, and then concrete blocks were laid up to the front window base height, to solidly support the frontal structure. The whole building was restumped, with cement filled reinforced concrete blocks under the side walls of the main section. Bob Hopkins didn’t want the rockery removed from the side at the time, so we had to dig into the back of the rockery to locate our new stumps. Solid objects in the earth frustrated our efforts to the extent that, two years later when Bob was gone and someone else removed the rockery, our less than straight stumps were exposed in all their glory. Regardless of that, they are perfectly solid, and support the building well.

The Hall side wall of the building had suffered badly over the years because the roofing iron toward the front on that side had always been too short, and water had been leaking inside the wall since it was built. We had to replace about twenty feet (6 metres) of wall, and extend the roofline in that area.

The old Neighbourhood Centre part of the building, now the Hemp Bar, had at some point had its front filled with windows. This was a bad thing because that little piece of wall had contained the only diagonal bracing in the whole front of the building. Fortunately some photos came to light showing the "original" 1973 front, and it was restored to a mirror image of that.

Also evident in the front was white ant damage from the sixties or seventies. The ants were long dead, killed by the poisons of an earlier age, but their damage remained. A lot of that was repaired then, but not the upper facade. As it turned out, it was the perpetually wet wood in the front facade and the streetmost part of the south side wall that had been the main attraction.

The termites were a local variety called nasutitermes walkeri.This species does not have the twin jaws of the common 'white ant', but a single chisel tooth, hence it is only attracted to the softest of timbers, and usually does less damage. Their tunnelmaking is more agressive to make up for that, and these little brown walkeri build around ant caps easily. They usually come from a dead or damaged tree nearby, and build large mud nests in trees and wall cavities. They prefer a damp environment. Unfortunately, aided by the lack of weather sealing, they did a lot of damage to the facade structure. Fortunately, we have been able to repair it in time.

The Upper Facade

In 2004, the top facade was repaired. The top was stripped of its metalwork, and the white ant damage behind from twenty five years ago finally rectified. Behind the metalwork FWA was painted on the woodwork in 250mm high capital letters. We'll probably never know why. Examining it all brought back Wick's remarks about a quick makeover. (Franco confessed to painting FWA there while helping Bob do a post-storm repair job)

Wick's comment makes sense when one notes all the shortcuts taken in construction of the top facade which it seems was never designed to be waterproof. The metal feature pieces were not fastened to keep rain out, top over bottom, but located for the appearance. Some metalwork had open gaps at the rear. A lot of the inch timber beneath the pressed metal sheet was eaten away by termites, but behind those some supports had simply rotted away with the dampness. The eighty odd year old steel nails had suffered a lot too, sometimes to the point of non existence. There was plenty of refastening, and replacing of timber to do. Some of the timber used to build the original façade had been second hand, most obviously, some once painted veranda posts in the ends. Certainly no exotic timbers were found. The top was quite shaky and poorly attached at the end corners. The centre peak is butt joined to the lower section, so it was necessary to reinstate the central pillars to give some rigidity to the join.

To explain that “reinstate” further, if you look at the photo at the beginning of this, you will see that there used to be another crosspiece horizontally through the lower centre of the upper façade when compared to the present structure, depicted in the lower drawing in the image below. That blew away in a storm in the early nineties, and Bob Hopkins repaired the remains, putting a fibro surface where the rusting pressed metal had been before. The old supporting pillars had gone with the wind. Bob did a fairly good job considering the difficulties. (Obviously, Franco helped.)

The more involved custom metalwork pieces were not soldered continuously in all places, but only tacked every 75mm or so where not visible. Additional shapes either side of the central peak were vertically nailed onto the top flashing, and not soldered or otherwise sealed. The stone look bits are just galvanised iron savagely beaten with a large ball pene hammer to get a roughcast look.

But while that might sound rough, the builder who constructed it clearly had a good artistic eye, and a clear grasp of how to make an impressive looking facade. I suspect he could have made it waterproof too, if the owner had been prepared to spend the extra. It is a testament to the durability of Australian hardwoods that it lasted so long poorly protected from the elements.)

The Tomato Sauce used to have an internal stairway to the lower rear in the middle of the shop floor, now floored over for more area, and external rear stairs are now used.

Limitations

The building will always subside with time. The weight of the rear two story section will always make that part sink even quicker. The stumps should be reset every five to ten years. It would be good to put concrete foundations under the outer walls of the rear section to make restumping even less frequent.

The building can never be perfectly “straight” because the front was added to an out-of-kilter building. At the moment the building falls about 25mm over the 10 metre width of the front towards the hotel. Underneath, with all stumps level, some of the time-bent bearers would not bend back to flat. The worst of these was above one of the dead tree stumps, a solid one, so the floor was winched down toward it and fastened flat that way. Generally the floor was flat to within 25 mm by the time works had finished.

At the rear of the building it is noted that the random addition of doors and windows has ensured that there are a maximum of only four or five studs in the back wall that pass all the way from top to bottom uncut. (Please do not add or subtract any more windows without the carpenter concerned being made aware of this weakness.)

Weatherboards rot, more slowly if painted than not! Replace rotting weatherboards as needed. Be warned, the original Tomato Sauce weatherboards are wider than current ones.

Drainage on the Hall side is less than ideal, and could be improved with some concreting. The less water gets under the building, the less its foundations move, and the less often it needs restumping work.

The local white ant variety becomes highly active in prolonged wet periods, tend to emanate from old stumps or damaged trees. When the nest is in a tree it is a large mud structure, but they can nest in ground amidst rotting stump remnants. They build rougher mud tunnels than the common white ant, and will build around ant caps and on metal supports to get to damp soft timber.

Concluding Remarks:
Summing up, the front doors were damaged, as were some weatherboards, stumps had sunk badly, the floor bowed to match, the northern wall frame was unattached at the floor, and the termite damaged facade had no real foundations to support it.

With these now fixed, the building is structurally safe and fully usable, where before, in the early 1990s, it had deteriorated to a dangerous level of neglect. Anything not mentioned was actually in relatively good condition, which was the decisive factor in taking it on, and carrying it through.

I do not think that repair and maintenance costs are excessive. Timber buildings are lower construction cost/higher maintenance than stone or concrete structures, but our variable soil types and densities make cracks and subsidence a real risk with brick and concrete buildings. Stone and concrete buildings cannot be relevelled if they move.

There is also the point that the Tomato Sauce is a heritage building in more ways than one, and that it is worth preserving as a classic example of federation shop-front architecture alone. Being a fan of that style makes it an easy decision for me. I hope the building survives another hundred years, whatever that original date of construction may be.
2004-06-29 Salty.

2007-03-14 In early 2007 the weatherboards on the rear wall were replaced, and the wall painted. A Heritage grant of $2000 has been approved to help restore the front awning to its former glory. The front awning segments are currently under construction, and will be erected before the 2007 MardiGrass.

2007-4-2 The two images below show the way it was in 1979, and how it is today, restoration nearly completed.
Differences: The three "towers are not as tall, (so as not to obscure any murals behind) and the underpanels are bigger,( to reduce the amount of hot afternnon sun that can pour into the building). Pressed metal to match the front wall was used in the panels. With the decorative pieces below, some are wider, some narrower, both accidents of measurement. Instead of the roof protruding through under the upper panels with a gutter out front, I have built a box gutter behind. The original roof was cut around the posts and crudely flashed, which seemed an invitation to post rot, so for the sake of durability, and appearance, I put a box gutter behind instead. I hope these small departures from the original are forgiveable.

11th August 2007