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Australian settler bush huts and Indigenous bark-strippers: Origins and influences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2020
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.
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36 Ethnology: The Australian Aborigines.—IV. Shifting Camp, The Queenslander, 27 April 1895, p. 789.
37 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.
38 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.
39 Katherine Aigner (ed.), Australia: The Vatican Museums’ Indigenous collections (Canberra: Edizioni Musei Vaticani/Aboriginal Studies Press, 2018), Figure 53.
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54 Cahir, ‘Shelter: Housing’, pp. 151–72.
55 ‘House building’, Evening News, 8 September 1909, p. 8. Italics added.
56 Christopher Eipper, Report of the German Mission to Aborigines of Moreton Bay (Sydney, 1841), p. 5.
57 Fairholme, ‘Sketches of the Aboriginal inhabitants of NSW’, pp. 97–8.
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60 Henry Reynolds, With the white people (Ringwood: Penguin, 1990), pp. 129, 159.
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62 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.
63 Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 19 March 1926, p. 5.
64 ‘Early reminiscences of Maryborough – paper by Mr John Purser’, Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 7 October 1905, p. 3.
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66 Fairholme, ‘Sketches of the Aboriginal inhabitants of NSW’, pp. 97–8.
67 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.
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80 ‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
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82 ‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
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95 Lang in Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, pp. 154–5.
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97 The Queenslander, 1 December 1877, p. 12.
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99 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).
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101 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.
102 ‘Stringy bark rope’, p. 3; ‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
103 ‘The Ross Munro story’, p. 8.
104 Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, p. 99.
105 Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, p. 99.
106 ‘Green-hide and stringy-bark’, p. 19.
107 ‘The production, industry and resources of New South Wales, XIII. Bushcraft’, p. 4.
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109 E. S. Sorensen, The Australasian, 26 May 1928, p. 6.
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111 Bruce Pascoe, Dark emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture, 2nd ed. (Broome: Magabala Books, 2014), pp. 103–5.
112 Julie Willis, ‘Corrugated iron’, in Philip Goad and Julie Willis (eds), Encyclopedia of Australian architecture (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 175.
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114 Marsden, ‘A century of building materials’, p. 9.
115 ‘Bark humpy: How to build it’, The Queenslander, 30 October 1930, p. 57.
116 ‘Wholesale stealing of bark’, The Moreton Bay, 22 December, 1859, p. 2.
117 ‘Local intelligence’, Moreton Bay Courier, 27 June 1846, p. 2.
118 Dhu, ‘Allora’s past’, p. 11; ‘Among the bark strippers. By a correspondent. No.VI,’ The Argus, 9 May 1878, p. 9.
119 ‘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.
120 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.
121 ‘Protection of Aborigines’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 February 1893, p. 5.