Welcome to my perfumed garden

Vinyl cladding is used to cover the timber frame of houses, as an external wall material.
After the second world war a pent-up demand for housing was released into a market suffering from a huge shortage of both materials and tradesmen. A lot of young couples (my grandparents included) bought their land, squatted on it in temporary accommodation while they built their own homes - a process that could take years as materials were not only scarce but hugely expensive. There was an explosion of "post-war austerity homes" eg extremely narrow eaves, no porches or verandahs, tiny rooms, small windows, and clad in fibro sheeting. (My grandparents' house had a brick porch tacked on the front. That was considered at the time to be quite "posh"!)
Now fibro sheeting is really fragile, and a backyard game of cricket could result in a hole through the wall. It also requires regular painting to remain waterproof. A whole industry sprang up in the 70s, based around the removal of fibro and replacement with vinyl cladding which simulates weatherboard, is sun-resistant, never requires painting and is tough as nails.
Cladding also was seen as a "step up" from fibro which developed a reputation as a poor person's housing material, in the main due to the Housing Commission which built huge estates of fibro homes for the lower income earners, who could rent (and later buy) these houses for a nominal sum, about a third of the going rent.
And then it was discovered that the asbestos cement of which fibro was manufactured is highly toxic and cancer-causing (if disturbed) so there was an even bigger rush to vinyl cladding.
*end of Australian cultural history lesson*
My house is vinyl-clad upstairs, but retains its original fibro sheeting externally downstairs.