Australian Settler Bush Huts and Indigenous Bark-Strippers
Origins and Influences
Keywords:
Australian bush hut, bark sheeting, ‘bark strippers’Abstract
This article considers the history of the Australian bush hut and its common building material: bark sheeting. It compares this with traditional Aboriginal bark sheeting and cladding, and considers the role of Aboriginal ‘bark strippers’ and Aboriginal builders in establishing salient features of the bush hut. The main focus is the Queensland region up to the 1870s.
References
Max Dupain and J. M. Freeland, Old colonial buildings of Australia (Sydney: Methuen, 1980); Roderick J. Lawrence, ‘Australian colonial architecture and European influences’, Architecture Australia 74(4) (1985), 27–31: Philip Cox and Clive Lucas, Australian Colonial Architecture (Sydney: Lansdowne Press, 1978); James Broadbent and Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, The Australian colonial house: Architecture and society in New South Wales 1788–1842 (Sydney: Historic Houses Trust, 1997); Miles Lewis, ‘The French connection: The secret history of French influence in Australian architecture’, Journal of Australian Colonial History 8 (2006), 91–116.
James Semple Kerr, Design for convicts: An account of design for convict establishments in the Australian colonies during the transportation era (Sydney: Library of Australian History in association with the National Trust of Australia (NSW) and the Australian Society for Historical Archaeology, 1984), p. vi.
Walter Ralston Bunning, Homes in the sun: The past, present and future of Australian housing (Sydney: Nesbit, 1945), 9; Robin Boyd, Australia’s home: Its origins, builders and occupiers (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1952), pp. 123–4; Miles Lewis, Victorian primitive (Melbourne: Greenhouse, 1977), p. 9; Ian Evans, The Australian Home (Sydney: Flannel Flower Press, 1983), pp. 36–7.
Banister Fletcher, A history of architecture on the comparative method: For the student, craftsman & amateur, 5th ed. (London: Batsford, 1905); Stephen Gardiner, The evolution of the house (Frogmore: Paladin Press, 1974); Spiro Kostof, A history of architecture: Settings and rituals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Witold Rybczynski, Home: A short history of an idea (New York: Penguin, 1987); Paul Oliver, Dwellings: The house across the world (Oxford: Phaidon, 1987), cited in Jay D. Edwards, ‘Architectural creolization: The importance of colonial architecture’, in Mari-José Amerlinck (ed.), Architectural anthropology (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), p. 86.
Julie Willis and Phillip Goad, ‘A bigger picture: Reframing Australian architectural history’, Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australian and New Zealand, 18(1) (2008), 10; Paul Memmott, Gunyah, goondie and wurley: The Aboriginal architecture of Australia (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2007); Paul Memmott, ‘Aboriginal architecture’, in Philip Goad and Julie Willis (eds), The encyclopaedia of Australian architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 1–4; Rebecca Kiddle, Luugigyoo Patrick Stewart, and Kevin O’Brien, Our voices: Indigeneity and architecture (Novato, CA: ORO Editions, 2018); Elizabeth Grant, Kelly Greenop, Albert L. Refiti and Daniel J. Glenn, The handbook of contemporary Indigenous architecture (Singapore: Springer, 2018).
Cathy Keys, ‘Preliminary historical notes on the transfer of Aboriginal architectural expertise on Australia’s frontier’, Fabrications 25(1) (2015), 48–61.
Tony Fry, ‘A geography of power: Design history and marginality’, Design Issues, 6(1) (1989), 15–30; Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992); Penelope Edmonds, Urbanizing frontiers: Indigenous peoples and settlers in 19th-century Pacific Rim cities, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), p. 15.
‘Green-hide and stringy-bark’, Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 26 April 1907, p. 19.
‘Green-hide and stringy-bark, p. 19.
Lewis, Victorian primitive, pp. 9, 15, 17, 28, 67.
Evans, The Australian home, pp. 36–7.
John Archer, Building a nation: A history of the Australian house (Sydney: William Collins, 1987), pp. 20–3.
Fred Cahir, ‘Shelter: Housing’, in Fred Cahir, Ian D. Clarke and Phillip A. Clarke (eds), Aboriginal biocultural knowledge in South-Eastern Australia: Perspectives from early colonists (Melbourne: CSIRO), pp. 151–72.
‘The Australian forest’, The Weekly Register of Politics, Facts and General Literature (Sydney), 6 January 1844, p. 361.
‘Green-hide and stringy-bark’, p. 19.
‘Classified advertising’, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 30 October 1819, p. 4; ‘Queensland native cutting bark’, Illustrated Sydney News, 8 June 1870, p. 4; Fred Cahir, ‘Shelter: Housing’, p. 151.
James Tucker, Ralph Rashleigh: Unexpurgation (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1962), pp. 104–6, cited in Phillip Cox, J. M. Freeland and Wesley Stacey, Rude timber buildings in Australia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1980), p. 44.
Cox et al., Rude timber buildings, 43; Phillip Cox and Clive Lucas, Australian colonial architecture, p. 31; Miles Lewis, ‘Australia from colonial origins’, in Commission Australian Heritage (ed.), The heritage of Australia: The illustrated register of the national estate (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1981), p. 74.
A.C., ‘Twenty years ago’, The Queenslander, 19 December 1885, p. 4.
‘The Ross Munro story: Bark huts’, The Inverell Times, 18 June 1954, p. 8.
QSA SRS 444/1 Item 40 Committee Correspondence Relating to Aboriginal Place Names 3 April 1907–1 September 1944 (Series 19733 Box 2), p. 8; ‘Queensland native cutting bark’, p. 4.
Brian Marsden, ‘A century of building materials in Queensland and Brisbane 1861–1961’, Australian Geographer 10(2) (1966), 123.
Andrew Long, Scarred trees: An identification and recording manual prepared for Aboriginal Affairs Victoria (Melbourne: Andrew Long & Associates and Department for Victorian Communities, 2003), p. 15.
‘Supreme Criminal Court’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 26 May 1829, p. 2; ‘Criminal Court’, The Sydney Monitor, 6 June 1829, p. 2.
Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 22 May 1847, p. 3.3.
‘Ship news’, The Cornwall Chronicle, 14 August 1847, p. 2.
‘Toowomba Police Court’, Toowoomba Chronicle and Queensland Advertiser, 22 September 1864, p. 2.
Timothy O’Rourke, ‘The well-crafted mija: Traditional Aboriginal building skills and knowledge in the Australian Wet Tropics’, PhD dissertation (Brisbane: University of Queensland, 2012).
Penny Tweddie, Aboriginal Australians: Spirit of Arnhem Land (London: New Holland, 1998), p. 136; Memmott, Gunya, p. 241.
David R. Moore, Oswald Walters Brierly and Barbara Thompson (eds), Islanders and Aborigines at Cape York: An ethnographic reconstruction based on the 1848–1850 ‘Rattlesnake’ journals of O. W. Brierly and information he obtained from Barbara Thompson (Canberra: AIATIS, 1979).
L. Haynes, J. Grant and J. Waddell, ‘An Aboriginal plaited grass shelter from Granites, Central Australia’, Mankind 6(10) (1967), 515–16.
‘Green-hide and stringy-bark’, p. 19.
Cathy Keys, ‘The architectural implications of Warlpiri Jilimi’, PhD dissertation (Brisbane: University of Queensland, 1999), p. 213; Memmott, Gunya, pp. 16, 99, 287.
Christopher Eipper, Statement of the origin, condition and prospects of the German Mission to the Aborigines at Moreton Bay (Sydney, James Reading, 1841), p. 5. Manuscript held at Fryer Library, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
J. G. Steele, The explorers of the Moreton Bay district, 1770–1830 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1972), pp. 78, 82; Constance Campbell Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1904), p. 100; Walter Edmund Roth, 1861–1933, ‘Bulletin no. 16: Huts and shelters’, in ‘North Queensland ethnography’, Records of the Australian Museum Sydney, 1907–1910 in K. F MacIntyre (ed.), The Queensland Aborigines (Perth: Hesperian Press, 1984 [1910]), pp. 60–1, 63; G. K. Jackson, ‘Darling Downs Aborigines: Customs and languages, Darling Downs 1840–1940’ (Toowoomba: Toowoomba Tourist Bureau, 1940), p. 35; John Matthew, Two representative tribes of Queensland: With an inquiry concerning the origin of the Australian race (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1910), pp. 83–4; Thomas Hall, A short history of the Downs Blacks known as ‘the Blucher Tribe’ (Toowoomba: Vintage Books, 1987), 25.
Ethnology: The Australian Aborigines.—IV. Shifting Camp, The Queenslander, 27 April 1895, p. 789.
Gaiarbau (Willie MacKenzie) & Lindsay P. Winterbotham, ‘Some native customs and beliefs of the Jinabara tribe as well as those of some of their neighbours in south-east Queensland’. Typescript, 1957, John Oxley Library, p. 41.
G. K. E. Fairholme, ‘Sketches of the Aboriginal inhabitants of NSW’, in Bill Love, Queensland Archaeology Research Vol. 1 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1984), p. 97; ‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
Katherine Aigner (ed.), Australia: The Vatican Museums’ Indigenous collections (Canberra: Edizioni Musei Vaticani/Aboriginal Studies Press, 2018), Figure 53.
‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
John McConnel, ‘Recollections of the Aborigines around Durundur’, Fryer McConnel Papers, University of Queensland.
Long, Scarred trees, p. 12.
Long, Scarred trees, p. 12.
Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, p. 100.
Eugene R. Rudder, ‘Black and white: Early settlement of NSW North Coast’, The Farmer and Settler (Sydney), 25 July 1924, p. 15.
‘Domestic intelligence’, Sydney Herald, 5 May 1841, p. 2; Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, p. 100.
Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences , p. 100.
Mrs Allan Macpherson, My Experiences in Australia: Being recollections of a visit to the Australian colonies in 1856–7 by a lady (London: J.F. Hope, 1860). Held in National Library of Australia Rex, Nan Kivell Collection NK2729.
‘Weekly Building Review’, The Star (Sydney), 17 January 1910, p. 4.
‘The buildings for farmers’, The Bunbury Herald and Blackwood Express, 7 January 1921, p. 2.
‘Bush architecture of other days’, The Land, 15 May 1936, p. 14.
‘Classified advertising’, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 30 October 1819, p. 4; ‘Queensland native cutting bark’, p. 4; Fred Cahir, ‘Shelter: Housing’, p. 151.
John Campbell, ‘The early settlement of Queensland and other articles with which is also printed “the raid of the Aborigines”/by William Wilks’, Ipswich Observer (1875), p. 9; Raymond Evans, ‘On the utmost verge: Race and ethnic relations at Moreton Bay, 1799–1842’, Queensland Review, 15(1) (2008), 23–5.
Cahir, ‘Shelter: Housing’, pp. 151–72.
‘House building’, Evening News, 8 September 1909, p. 8. Italics added.
Christopher Eipper, Report of the German Mission to Aborigines of Moreton Bay (Sydney, 1841), p. 5.
Fairholme, ‘Sketches of the Aboriginal inhabitants of NSW’, pp. 97–8.
John Matthew, Two representative tribes of Queensland (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1910), pp. 84–5.
O’Brien, The Logan story, p. 51.
Henry Reynolds, With the white people (Ringwood: Penguin, 1990), pp. 129, 159.
‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
Ray Kerkhove, ‘The Indigenous timber getters of the Sunshine Coast’, in Meredith Walker (ed.), A History of Trees in Buderim: Research & Preliminary Inventory (Buderim: Buderim Historical Society, 2014), pp. 54ff.
Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 19 March 1926, p. 5.
‘Early reminiscences of Maryborough – paper by Mr John Purser’, Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 7 October 1905, p. 3.
‘The Aboriginal Natives’, The Queenslander, 7 March 1883, p. 419.
Fairholme, ‘Sketches of the Aboriginal inhabitants of NSW’, pp. 97–8.
Mr and Mrs Joseph Collins, ‘Memories of the Blacks’, Queensland Times, 15 October 1927, p. 13; Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 1859, p. 2; ‘Cooma’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 1856, p. 6; Sydney Free Press, 26 October 1841, p. 4; ‘German mission’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1842, p. 3; Ray Kerkhove, ‘Aboriginal trade in fish and seafoods to settlers in nineteenth-century South-East Queensland: A vibrant industry?’, Queensland Review, 20(2) (2013), 144–56.
The Queenslander, 5 May 1928, p. 13.
Lockyer District – the History of Helidon, Queensland Times, 28 April 1928, 13.
‘Cooma’, p. 6.
Corbie Dhu, Allora’s past: The early history of the Allora district (Allora: Allora Guardian, 1930), p. 11.
‘Country news’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 1859, p. 2.
Collins, ‘Memories of the Blacks’, p. 13; Mrs S. K. M. Hartley of Torquay, recalling ‘Early days in Noosa 1891–1907’, in Alisa R Dawson (ed.), Early chronicles of cypress land: Cooloola, John Oxley Library Pamphlets, Queensland State Library, 1988, pp. 47–8.
Jan Walker, ‘The settlement and development of Jondaryan Station’, Honours thesis (Brisbane: University of Queensland, 1957), p. 7.
‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
Edgar Foreman, The History and Adventures of a Queensland Pioneer (Brisbane: Exchange Printing, pp. 13–14).
‘News of the week’, The Queenslander, 28 December 1867, p. 5.
Joseph Dixon, ‘Reminiscences’, unpublished manuscript (Buderim: Buderim Historical Society, 1928), p. 18.
‘Mackay’, The Queenslander, 22 May 1869, p. 7.
‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
Collins, ‘Memories of the Blacks’, p. 13; Hartley recalling ‘Early Days in Noosa 1891-1907’, pp. 47–8.
‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
O’Brien, The Logan Story, p. 51.
‘German Mission – to the Editors of the Sydney Morning Herald’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1842, p. 3.
‘Claypan squatters’, The Sun (Sydney), 30 April 1939, p. 8.
The Sun (Sydney), 9 December 1915, p. 9.
‘Nut squad’, In Early ‘Courier’ Days: Places and Persons’, Brisbane Courier, 22 June 1926, p. 32.
‘The Aborigines’, Adelaide Observer, 28 July 1860, p. 6.
‘The Aborigines’, The Hobart Town Courier, 31 August 1832, p. 4.
‘The Aboriginal question in Queensland’, Queensland Country Life, 1 July 1902, p. 14.
Nicholas Gill and Alistair Paterson, ‘A work in progress: Aboriginal people and pastoral heritage in Australia’, in Geographies of Australian heritage: Loving a sunburnt country? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 113f; Alistair G. Paterson, The lost legions: Culture contact in colonial Australia (Lanham.MD: AltaMira Press, 2008).
Cathy Keys and Ray Kerkhove, ‘“Lighthouse communities” and Indigenous-settler cultural entanglements: The early architectural history of Southern Queensland’s lighthouses and pilot stations’, Queensland History Journal, 24(2) (2019), pp. 213–29.
‘Queensland notes – well named’, Sydney Mail, 24 August 1938, p. 4.
‘News of the week’, The Queenslander, 28 December 1867, p. 5.
Lang in Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, pp. 154–5.
Our Correspondent, Brisbane Courier, 31 January 1866, p. 2.
The Queenslander, 1 December 1877, p. 12.
‘The production, industry and resources of New South Wales, XIII. Bushcraft’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 September 1851, p. 4.
See James W. Waugh, Australian settler’s handbook: Being practical hints for the unexperienced on the most simple and profitable method of cultivating their land: Being the result of many years’ experience in the Colony (Sydney: James W Waugh, 1861). George H. Tolley, The settler’s handbook: A short compendium of information, compiled for the use of settlers at the Australian irrigation colonies of Mildura and Renmark (Melbourne: Spectator Publishing Co., 1890).
Matthew, Two representative tribes of Queensland, p. 84.
Miles Lewis, ‘3. Earth and stone (typescript notes)’, in Australian Building: A Cultural Investigation (2019), pp. 1–4; Queensland State Archive, SRS 444/, Item 40, ‘Committee correspondence relating to Aboriginal place names’, 3 April 1907–1 September 1944 (Series 19733, Box 2), 8; ‘Pioneer families – early settlers of Prenzlau and Lowood – collected by a member’, Rosewood Scrub Museum files, 1979, p. 4.
‘Stringy bark rope’, p. 3; ‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, p. 99.
Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, p. 99.
‘Green-hide and stringy-bark’, p. 19.
‘The production, industry and resources of New South Wales, XIII. Bushcraft’, p. 4.
‘The production, industry and resources of New South Wales, III. Indigenous productions. (Continued.)’ Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 1885, p. 2.
E. S. Sorensen, The Australasian, 26 May 1928, p. 6.
‘Cordeaux Dam. Wailing up a river’, Camden News, 18 September 1924, p. 1.
Bruce Pascoe, Dark emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture, 2nd ed. (Broome: Magabala Books, 2014), pp. 103–5.
Julie Willis, ‘Corrugated iron’, in Philip Goad and Julie Willis (eds), Encyclopedia of Australian architecture (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 175.
Miles Lewis, ‘8.04 Corrugated iron’, 8.04.6, Australian Building: A Cultural Investigation, http://www.mileslewis.net/australian-building/pdf/08-metals/8.04-corrugated-iron.pdf; Ray Sumner, ‘Pioneer homesteads of North Queensland’, in Lectures on North Queensland History (1974), p. 15; Ann Warr, ‘The technology of the corrugated shed’, in Peter Freeman and Judy Vulker (eds), The Australian dwelling (Canberra: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 1992), p. 87.
Marsden, ‘A century of building materials’, p. 9.
‘Bark humpy: How to build it’, The Queenslander, 30 October 1930, p. 57.
‘Wholesale stealing of bark’, The Moreton Bay, 22 December, 1859, p. 2.
‘Local intelligence’, Moreton Bay Courier, 27 June 1846, p. 2.
Dhu, ‘Allora’s past’, p. 11; ‘Among the bark strippers. By a correspondent. No.VI,’ The Argus, 9 May 1878, p. 9.
‘Aborigines Protection Board’, The Australian Star (Sydney), 10 June 1893, p. 2; ‘Illegal bark-stripping’, Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 5 April 1887, p. 2; ‘Stealing bark’, Macleay Argus, 8 December 1900, p. 13.
See Dawn May, Aboriginal labour and the cattle industry: Queensland from white settlement to the present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Odette Best and Bronwyn Fredericks, ‘Aboriginal Australian women and work: An historical context, paper presented at Oxford Women’s Leadership Symposium (OWLS 2013) and the London Education Research Symposia 2013, 5–6 December 2013.
‘Protection of Aborigines’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 February 1893, p. 5.
