The strong light and heat of the sun has the effect of a window-tax in
limiting the size and number of the windows. A few French windows are to
be found in Adelaide, but the old sashes are almost universal. Of, late a
fashion has sprung up for bow-windows, which, however pretty, have here
the great disadvantage of attracting the sun unpleasantly. Shutters are
not much used. Venetian blinds are more common. On a hot summer day it is
absolutely necessary to shut all windows and draw down the blinds if you
wish to keep at all cool. About five o'clock, if there is no hot wind,
the house may be opened out.

Nearly every house that can afford the space has a veranda, which
sometimes stretches the whole way round. The rooms are usually lofty for
their size, in winter horribly cold and draughty, in summer unbearably
stuffy in small houses, the science of ventilation being of recent
introduction. Even in large establishments all the living-rooms are
almost always on the ground-floor, both on account of the fatigue of
going up and down stairs, and owing to the paucity of servants. As a
rule, the kitchens are terribly small, and in summer filled with flies.
How the poor servants manage to exist in them is more than I can
understand. It is no wonder they ask such high wages. In a few larger
houses a merciful fashion has been adopted of making the kitchen a mere
cooking galley, the cook preparing the dishes and doing all that does not
require the presence of fire in a large back-kitchen. Happily every house
has a bath-room, though it is often only a mere shed of wood or
galvanized iron put up in the back-yard. In many of the poorer households
this shed does double duty as bath-house and wash-house, or the
wash-house consists of a couple of boards, with a post to keep them up,
and a piece of netting overhead to keep the sun off. In larger houses,
both bath-rooms and wash-houses are much the same as in England. Nearly