But it remains on my bookshelf, more thumbed than ever, and still referred to for broad reference and still much loved.

The reason I fell in love with it was that it mapped very clearly the evolution of Australian home design from the earliest European homes up to the 1950s when the book was published.

And one of the ideas which fascinated me was that our homes show our changing priorities, attitudes and needs.

The clearest example was the garage, which Boyd noted began life as a sort of shed/stable down on the back fence line. It then had two thin strips of concrete running from the front gate to the shed when cars entered our lives.

As the car became more and more important, both as a useful thing and as a thing of pride in itself, the garage began to creep further and further forward on the property.

When Boyd was writing, the garage had made it to be on equal footing with the actual home. Side by side.

I doubt he could’ve predicted it would then have continued its inexorable forward push, right to the front fence.

Then pushing the house to the background so that in many of our newer suburbs, the garage is the main design element facing the street. Ours has actually made it inside the house.

I was thinking about how these things evolve the other day when looking at the latest house prize in the Ourtown lottery. (It used to be Boystown, but despite renaming it OURtown, Mrs Whacked and I have yet to be given one after nearly 30 years of buying tickets.)

I was counting the number of dunnies in the latest Gold Coast gin palace, but more, noting where they were in the house.

I reckon it’s the same as the garage story.

They started down the absolute back of the property either because they ponged (with, to quote Kenny, a stink which would outlast Catholicism), or for ease of access to the dunny cart bloke.

Then came sewerage, and – freed from their back-fence anchors – they, and generations of spiders, started to creep forward.

They got attached to verandahs and separate laundries and sheds.

Then, in my lifetime, they snuck through the back door and, while not quite domesticated enough to be part of the normal homes, they had a little room near the back landing.

After that, they tip-toed their way into the bathroom. Note, THE bathroom. Just one.

I was okay with that, but for a long time I couldn’t get along with the idea of ensuites, bathrooms and dunnies attached to the actual bedroom.

Now, at a rapidly escalating age, I find that idea somewhat acceptable. Even though it seems to be an architectural way of concentrating more and more of life’s necessary activities in a smaller and smaller area.

As our cooking and eating areas expand into vast halls, our sleeping, washing and abluting (is that even a word?) get jammed into one space.

If Boyd’s mapping of the garage holds true for dunnies, we will soon have equipment right alongside – or even IN – the bed to handle bodily waste.

A sort of back-to-the-future high tech potty.

At that point, I’m moving to the garage.