I was thinking originally of a gravel pad for trailer and mulch section for chooks. Then with clothesline and path out of laundry door.
Now I'm not so sure thinking of just concreting the lot and leaving a 1m strip on boundary for plants.
Want to keep side access - don't want to put anything there that would stop me getting trailer/ car around back
I’m tossing up between a **Spotted Gum deck or a concrete terrace** for this part of the backyard.
The area is about **4.5m x 7m** and slopes away from the house. Whatever I do will eventually have an awning over it.
The existing covered alfresco is already Spotted Gum, so a new deck would tie straight into that and I definitely prefer the look of timber.
On the other hand, concrete seems much better from a maintenance/practicality point of view and I’ll already have some concrete on the side of the house for the trailer/path areas.
The rest of the backyard will stay mostly lawn and garden, so I’m also wondering whether a big concrete terrace would make the whole thing feel a bit too hard.
For anyone who has done something similar, what would you choose here?
Main things I’m weighing up are **cost, maintenance, drainage/cracking, heat under the awning and whether matching the existing Spotted Gum is worth sticking with decking**.
Photos/sketch and AI mock-up attached. Hoping to spend approx $20k
I’m starting to build up a bit of a Folio Society history collection and would love some recommendations from people who know the back catalogue better than I do.
I’ve always enjoyed exploration and adventure history. I loved Ranulph Fiennes’ biography of Shackleton and Peter Hopkirk’s *The Great Game*, but the book that really sent me down this rabbit hole was William H. Prescott’s *History of the Conquest of Mexico*. That one had a pretty profound impact on me.
There was something about Prescott’s style that really grabbed me – huge events, larger-than-life characters, exploration, battles, politics and cultures colliding, but written as an actual story rather than modern academic history. Since then I’ve become really interested in that older tradition of literary/narrative historians – Prescott, Parkman, Gibbon, Macaulay, Carlyle, etc. – as well as first-hand exploration accounts.
I already have a few Folios along those lines (Burton, Cook, *The Fatal Shore*, *The Raj*, *Rise and Fall of the British Empire*, Prescott’s *Mexico*, etc.), and I’ve just ordered Parkman’s *The Oregon Trail*.
I’m now looking at sets like Gibbon’s *Decline and Fall*, Macaulay’s *History of England*, Carlyle’s *French Revolution* and Hodgkin’s *Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire*.
What other Folio editions am I missing that fit this particular niche?
Especially interested in:
* 18th/19th-century narrative historians
* conquest, exploration and empire
* great expeditions or military campaigns
* first-hand historical/travel accounts
* history that reads more like literature than a textbook
Would love to hear about any obscure older Folio editions worth hunting down.