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Australian Settler Bush Huts and Indigenous Bark-Strippers: Origins and Influences

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Australian Settler Bush Huts and Indigenous Bark-Strippers: Origins and Influences Australian settler bush huts and Indigenous bark-strippers: Origins and influences Ray Kerkhove and Cathy Keys [email protected], [email protected] 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. Introduction For over a century, studies of vernacular architectures in Australia prioritised European high-style colonial vernacular traditions.1 Critical analyses of early Australian colonial vernacular architecture, such as the bush or bark huts of early settlers, were scarce.2 It was assumed Indigenous influences on any European-Australian architecture could not have been consequential.3 This mirrored the global tendency of architectural research, focusing on Western tradi- tions and overlooking Indigenous contributions.4 Over the last two decades, greater appreciation for Australian Indigenous archi- tectures has arisen, especially through Paul Memmott’s ground-breaking Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley: The Indigenous Architecture of Australia (2007). This was recently enhanced by Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture (2018) and the Handbook of Indigenous Architecture (2018). The latter volumes located architec- tural expressions of Indigenous identity within broader international movements.5 Despite growing interest in the crossover of Australian Indigenous architectural expertise into early colonial vernacular architectures,6 consideration of intercultural architectural exchange remains limited.7 This article focuses on the early settler Australian bush hut – specifically its widespread use of bark sheets as cladding. We consider the probability of Indigenous influences on the choice and use of building materials. The Australian bush hut is classified as vernacular architecture, visually identified by its bark or slab walls and roofing (Figure 1). By 1907, there were moves to retain such huts for their ‘nice comfortable roofs’ and ‘harmony with the general tone of Queensland Review 1 Volume 27 | Issue 1 | 2020 | pp. 1–20 | © The Author(s) 2020 | Downloaded fromdoi 10.1017/qre.2020.1https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 49.198.187.197, on 10 Jun 2020 at 21:21:40, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2020.1 Ray Kerkhove and Cathy Keys Figure 1. Settler’s bark hut on Laidley Creek. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, c. 1880. Image number APE-021-01-0019. Trackson Family Photograph Albums, http://hdl.handle.net/10462/eadarc/6614. the landscape’.8 They were extolled as embodying Australia’s heritage and environment: the grey bark roofs of the Australian bush-houses seem to have been put into their position by an artistic arrangement of Nature’s own ordering, so much do they accord with the predominating colors of the general hue of the landscape.9 By the 1970s, architectural historians had classified the bush hut as ‘one of the most successful of colonial innovations’.10 It frequently appeared in Australian art, films and literature as quintessential ‘outback Australian’ architecture. Today, models are sold in tourist outlets. Indigenous influences on the bush hut were first acknowledged within academic circles through Ian Evans’ The Australian Home (1983). Evans suggested that ‘credit should be given to the Aborigines, who employed sheets of bark in the construction of their mia-mias’.11 John Archer’s Building a Nation: A History of the Australian House (1987) followed, asserting that, ‘This expertise in the selection and use of native materials was passed on by example to the early settlers, who seldom acknowledged the source.’12 However, there was no investigation into how such knowledge transfer occurred. Finally, in 2018, Fred Cahir authored a chapter titled ‘Shelter: Housing’ in the edited book Aboriginal Biocultural Knowledge in South-eastern Australia: Per- spectives from Early Colonists. This provided multiple examples of colonial dependence on Indigenous knowledge. Cahir argues that there is evidence within vernacular architecture of this dependence in the borrowing and adoption of Indigenous words for homes, such as ‘willam, humpy, gunya, mia-mia and wurley’. He also notes settlers’ use of Indigenous shelters, and their reliance on Indigenous building materials. Cahir brought attention to the fact that Indigenous people were themselves involved in the process of building settlers’ huts.13 This chapter enlarges 2 Queensland Review Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 49.198.187.197, on 10 Jun 2020 at 21:21:40, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2020.1 Australian settler bush huts and Indigenous bark-strippers on these findings by offering an in-depth study of bark sheeting. We reconstruct the Indigenous ‘bark stripping’ industry, conduits for knowledge-transmission and examples of technology transfer. Evolution of the settler bush hut and its bark sheeting Australian forests provided stronger, more pliable barks than what remained in Europe. Settlers were fascinated the ability of Australian trees to ‘yield ::: bark easily’.14 The strong bark of box, ironbark, stringy bark, tallow wood and others was abundant and readily available near the first settlements.15 Since around 1810, and especially after the 1820s, shortages of traditional European building materials and settlers’ unfamiliarity with local equivalents led to ‘mimicking’ of Indigenous building with bark sheets.16 This is evident in the following convict account of bark roofing a slab hut on the Hawkesbury River: All of these structures were composed of ::: slabs or thin pieces split off by means of mauls and wedges from logs, the roof covered with forest box or stringy-bark, which was stripped from the living trees in sheets of about six feet [1.8 m] long and from two to four feet [0.6–1.2 m] wide, laid upon rafters composed of small sapling poles just as they came from being cut in the bush. The sheets of bark, having holes pierced through each in pairs, were then tied on the rafters with cords twisted of the inner rind of the kurrajong tree.17 It became standard settler practice to cover timber-framed roofs with manufactured slabs of eucalyptus bark stripped from tree trunks in sheets, 6 x 3 feet (1.8 x 0.9 m) in size and weighted down and fastened without nails with an external layer of cross saplings tied through to the rafters to allow for contraction and to stop the bark slabs from curling.18 Suitable slabs of bark were sought as much as 20 kilometres from the site of intended construction. The bark slabs were split, trimmed and flattened, and served for both walls and roofing.19 Ross Munro, recalling his pioneering years in Northern New South Wales, noted that, ‘Almost without exception ::: huts were built wholly from sheets of bark and saplings ::: Bark, for years and years of the early days, was the only roofing material.’20 In the Maroochy district of South-East Queensland), a pioneer recalled that ‘the first houses were all of bark, then split slabs’, while near Sydney bark was ‘much used’ for roofing. Even in 1870 there were still numerous examples within a short distance of the city.21 By 1851, bark and ‘inferior materials’ (thatch, bushes or rushes) provided the roofing materials for 26.8 per cent of all dwellings in the northern police districts of New South Wales, and 25.7 per cent in 1856. Similarly, in 1864 some 47.2 per cent of all roofs in Queensland were made of bark or inferior materials.22 These figures greatly under-estimate the full extent of bark use as a building material, as statistics were only obtained for dwellings substantial enough to be considered homes. Bark became increasing valuable not only as a cladding material but also as shingles (roof tiles) and as a tanning agent.23 By 1829, men were indicted before Sydney’s Supreme Court for stealing bark sheets. Requests rang out for increased police surveillance of bark shipments at wharves.24 In May 1847, the Juno steamer shipped 25 tons of bark from Boyd Town (Twofold Bay) north to Sydney for sale, as fewer suitable trees remained around Sydney.25 In August of that same year, exports Queensland Review 3 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 49.198.187.197, on 10 Jun 2020 at 21:21:40, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2020.1 Ray Kerkhove and Cathy Keys from Launceston (Tasmania) to Port Fairy (Victoria) included 10,000 shingles and ‘50 tons bark.’26 Not all of this was specifically for building needs, but it shows the value of the bark trade. Legal disputes over bark sheet theft on the Darling Downs continued into the 1860s.27 Indigenous manufacture of cladding materials Concurrent with the development of the settler bush hut were Indigenous architec- tural traditions, many tens of thousands of years old. Building materials within these traditions varied according to cultural mores, climate and available resources. In North Queensland, lawyer cane was central, used with palm fronds to create various domed shelters,28 while on the Cooper Basin earth and mud prevailed. In eastern Arnhem Land, Indigenous women used pandanus leaves to weave domed forms as shelters, body screens and mats.29 Manufactured woven mats were similarly created by Torres Strait Islander people and used for a range of building purposes, including cladding on dwellings and shade structures, ceremonial screens, windbreaks and seating platforms.30 In Central Australia, cladding was more usually grass.
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