Whatever you do never plant a gum! They have no place in suburban areas! The sooner the council realises that these trees kill people the better! We have had two gum trees fall on the back of our house now, one in 2012 and one in 2014. We are so lucky that myself, my husband, three children, three dogs, five Guinea pigs, two parrots and one bearded dragon were not injured. It's just a miracle not once but twice! I still don't know how we escaped unharmed. The gums do not have a stable root system and they grow very shallow, they get to the point where they just fall over. And the scary thing is they fall silently. They are not called 'Widow Makers' in the bush for no reason. I like the Tuckeroo tree, not sure of scientific name. They grow with a straight trunk and keep their foliage in a straight and symmetrical line along the bottom and grow hiding their branches. Essentially they look like a large mushroom. They are green all year too. I think they get to about 6 metre or ten if they have to reach for the sun.

@Karen Hodge, I hear you!! Sometimes I think the estate agent should carry quite a bit of the blame actually. If they do their job correctly like you see in the adds on TV, they should bring these discrepancies to the attention of the sellers, stand on their morals and say if you can't get it better than this, then you'll have to find someone else to sell your home!! I know you can't make everybody "house proud" but the saying "do unto others" springs to mind. I bet if these same people bought a house not up to scratch, "a current affair" would hear about it but they don't think it wrong to simply walk out on a house that isn't being left nicely for the next family!! I have some friends that recently sold a house in Essendon, Melb and whilst the buyers were back and forth selling their own home, my friends kept watering the plants and even did things like painted out the wardrobes because of the scuff marks made over time!! They cleaned the entire two storey house from top to bottom and finished by mopping the floors as they were exiting. The buyers were so taken by the entire home, they bought it with almost all the furniture that my friends had in it!!

DB.....A LOT of ideas and advice flying around here.......skimming through I see you are endeavouring to establish a basic concept for a designer/architect to consolidate for you, which is great.......whilst you may think this is a logical approach to achieve the best outcome, you are arguably just throwing around random ideas rather than properly resolving/focusing on the critical aspects ........my advice is do this: firstly clearly ascertain two things on paper, not in plan or building format but in writing...that is 1. List all your requirements/needs/goals and 2. Nominate a budget. Next, identify/research a logical local designer/architect option and approach them with this information....A designer's job is to come up with an appropriate concept/solution that best balances your requirements, aligned with a budget and of course make it viable within context/site. Sure, you want a cost effective/modest result, that's fine, and that will influence the solution, but as a general comment it feels like there is massive potential being missed considering the site..it dens;t necessarily have to be that big or fancy, but you have to put the EXPERIENCE of the home front and centre of the process, and not just think of it as a kitchen or whatever laid out this way or that ....This is about an amazing site and the living experience of that and the design should be based on this and bring together your specific requirements elegantly balanced in context......The issue I have scrolling through all this is that you have all these almost disconnected ideas of building form, but you have this incredible site....... the process of resolving the spaces ideally needs to develop from cues of the immediate environment/site in order to make the most of it since you are pursuing a customised solution.....agree with MB, every project has a budget and ultimately from experience this is in general the ultimate/overriding constraint. This project could be anything upwards from $500K and it will come down to the working out how far you want to take it, and what your priorities are over various levels.......this one has seriously significant potential -make sure you make the most of it as you're truly fortunately to have this opportunity to build a home for you and your family to enjoy there.......best of luck :) PD

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