the most potent inducement at the time was the guarantee of a house. The Commonwealth Government's solution was to engage the Government of South Australia under the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement to build a housing estate at Salisbury North explicitly to house the "industrials" (sub-professional employees) of LRWE, on the argument that these grades would be most attracted by the idea of housing close at hand. Starting in 1949, the job was undertaken by the South Australian Housing Trust, the statutory authority responsible for providing low-cost rental housing to working people. The original concept had been that houses for the LRWE employees would be scattered through a wider community to avoid Salisbury North becoming a ghetto. But these advanced notions did not persist, for the economies inherent in making it an estate development were too great to ignore when both money and housing materials were in short supply. The small, semi-detached "maisonettes" subsequently built at Salisbury North were intended to be permanent and their deficiencies have become a permanent part of the Salisbury urban landscape. Most were built using large blocks of Mount Gambier limestone. A local historian described them as: low cost structures ... of monotonous form, being identical to each other, endless in their rows, all with a rusting chainwire mesh fence and weathering to that insipid yellow/brown of weathered limestone. Their appearance could be said to be the trademark of any Australian public housing authority of the immediate post-war era. In their architecture a mark of contempt seems to be expressed for the people in residence. The slovenliness of the domestic architecture was matched by the absence of even a rudimentary attempt at town planning. The powers of the Housing Trust were limited at the time merely to putting up houses: it could not build shops or roads or footpaths, or community amenities halls, play-grounds or parks. No public telephone was installed until the end of 1952. Until 1955 the estate was not even sewered; before April 1953, when nearly 300 families were living there, tenants were instructed to bury sewage themselves in their backyards. Since the area is low lying and prone to flooding, the unmade roads could be quagmires in winter. Bagster’s Road, the main thoroughfare to LRWE, was a mud track. Employees used to come to work in heavy gum boots, walking because the road was impassable to vehicles. Later events The proportion of LRWE