Moving House

I must be getting old and deluded.

My understanding has always been that houses stay in one place as vehicles drive past.

I've discovered that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes (in fact very often recently) houses move past, whilst cars park behind them. On my recent journeys west along the Warrego, as often as not, I've come across houses on the move. They have come in all shapes and sizes, from dongas intended as accommodation for miners, to colonial mansions, usually split in two, crawling along the highway.

In my last five trips, I've encountered moving houses three times. That's a pretty fair average.

Today, between Chinchilla and Miles, I crawled along for about forty minutes at thirty five to forty kph. The posted limit road on this road is 110kph, and that's a safe speed on this very good road.

I would have lost about an hour's productive time, because of the initial delay, and then when the rig finally pulled over, the time taken to negotiate the banked up traffic was an issue. There's a real cost to my clientele. The legalities of this are unknown to me, but I reckon a smart-arse lawyer could have a field day.

I guess these things have to be moved somehow, but my observations indicate that some of the people doing the moves are cowboys. Last year I followed one of these moving houses which amputated twenty or thirty roadside guide posts on one slightly narrower stretch of the highway between Morven and Augathella.

The contractors didn't seem even slightly embarrassed.

Today's house was shedding bits and pieces along the way. Perhaps they were being paid on the delivered weight – the building's configuration didn't seem important.

I'm glad I wasn't the owner.