Roof cleaning for Ourimbah's township and acreages

How should Ourimbah's older and heritage homes be cleaned?

Ourimbah grew on timber. Its blue gum, blackbutt, spotted gum and white mahogany were milled between 1840 and 1870 to feed building in Sydney, and when the timber thinned, citrus and dairying carried the district until both struggled from the 1950s. The town was once called Blue Gum Flats, and Ourimbah Creek skirts its northern edge.

Moving the school and building the railway allowed land to be cut into town-sized lots, and the early 1970s land boom broke farms into smaller holdings, leaving pockets of suburban streets among acreages. Several buildings are heritage listed, among them dwellings in Chittaway Road and Shirley Street and the former post office on Ourimbah Creek Road.

Separate houses were 75.9% of the occupied homes counted in 2021, with semis and townhouses making up 22.7%. Era matters on older stock: SafeWork NSW notes that asbestos cement sheet was a common building material from the 1940s right up to the late 1980s, a window that covers houses built after the land boom, and it rules out high pressure water on asbestos altogether. Older walls are therefore given a gentle soft wash, and roofs a low-pressure roof treatment.

Key figures

1887

Ourimbah railway station opened

1840s

timber cutting drew settlers

75.9%

of occupied homes were separate houses

Sources

• Wikipedia, Ourimbah
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats, Ourimbah
• SafeWork NSW, Asbestos
• NSW Spatial Services, Administrative Boundaries (postcode, council, distance, neighbours)