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

Home , Humpy, Slab hut, The Bush, Vernacular architecture

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 traditions and overlooking Indigenous contributions.4 Over the last two decades, greater appreciation for Australian Indigenous architectures 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 architectural 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

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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

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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 architectural 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. In the late 1990s, senior Warlpiri women highlighted the identification and selection of a spinifex species that repelled water. They demonstrated several different techniques to harvest and then plait this spinifex into lightweight, waterproof, thatched mats. In dry weather, these mats were used as windbreaks. Women remembered transporting mats on their shoulders and noted their traditional use as a vital cladding material in wet weather.31 Paperbark from a range of Melaleuca species was favoured in many places for its flexibility. It was variously draped, pleated or folded around a bough framework (Figures 2 and 3). In 1904, an observer gushed over its versatility: In Queensland, in the tropical portion, and in the northern coastal lands of the remainder of Australia, the drooping tea-tree, or paper-bark tree, serves the wandering native nearly as many offices as the bamboo does the Chinaman. As a piccaninny, the bark forms a cradle; as a corpse it forms his coffin. An oblong piece twisted up at either end forms a coolamon, or a dilly bag. A strip makes either a sheath for the head of his stone spear, or a case to contain his paints and toilet necessaries. A ragged piece rolled up makes a firestick to light his fire, and a sheet of it serves for a covering for his gunyah. Nay, on a pinch, he could make a, canoe out of a bigger bit, and manage to cross an estuary of the sea infested with sharks and crocodiles. It is everything from his daily newspaper to his Sunday table-cloth.32 Bark slabs were a particularly widespread form of Indigenous cladding. These were prised from various stringy-barked eucalyptus after rainy periods (when the bark lifted easily). The resultant self-supporting slabs were bent to use as vaulted roofs, or applied as flat sheets (Figure 4). Bark sheets were tied down to framing, with heavier timber members or lightweight forest vines also placed over slabs to weigh them down. Slabs were fixed at ground level by burying the ends and mounding sand or soil against them. This aided waterproofing.33 Hut-building was often carried out ‘entirely by women’.34 There are numerous accounts of Indigenous women cutting bark, building dwellings and then

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Figure 2. Couple seated in front of paperbark hut, Beenleigh, Queensland, c. 1895. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Image number 021312.

Figure 3. Indigenous men removing stringy bark sheets from trees c. 1900, Port Macquarie area, NSW. Photographer Thomas Dick, State Library of New South Wales, Call number: At work and play – 04743, FL1675881.

transporting the components on their backs when groups travelled.35 Men cut sheets and sometimes the tougher frameworks.36 Signiﬁcantly, sheets had templates. Kilcoy Elder Gaiarbau recalled that men cut exact lengths of bark:

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Figure 4. Family group outside their stringybark hut, Ipswich District, Queensland, c. 1905. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, neg. 173094.

For making their huts or humpies, they used the bark of blackbutt, stringybark or tallow-wood, cut into six or eight-foot lengths. They would get six or eight pieces from one big tree. Circular cuts would be made at the right distances apart, and a perpendicular one right down. This bark was prised off with a stick, beginning at the top, and each piece then dropped down the whole length of the trunk to the ground. This could only be done at the right season when the sap was up. The huts were about 12 feet [3.6 m] long, 8 feet [2.4 m] wide, had an earthen floor and a sloping roof, and were high enough to stand in.37 Gairabau’s ‘6 to 8 feet’ lengths equate with Fairholme’s 1844 observation on the coast of sheets ‘from 4 to 7 feet high and from 2 to 5 feet wide’.38 Western Australian specimens were half this size (4 feet by 1 foot).39 Northern NSW sheets were generally 8 feet by 5 feet.40 The ‘strong bark’ sheets used at Woodford (Queensland) were 10 feet long.41 Such variance suggests that although slabs were regularly thick (West Australian slabs were 6 inches deep), rectangular and longer than they were wide, templates varied within and beyond each region. This reflected different hut styles, available barks, expediency (several pieces being fashioned from a single sheet)42 and tailoring of sheets to meet highly specific needs.43 Huts were frequently dismantled: ‘the same materials, foundation and all, were used ::: again and again’.44 When the group moved elsewhere, bark slabs were stored in heaps on logs raised off the ground or in crevices, weighed down to maintain their form.45 Paperbark sheeting was similarly stored but also transported in bundles by women, being lightweight and not available in all environments.46 Indigenous housing was always morphing, shrinking and enlarging.47 Anne MacPherson noticed huts moving around each living area to capitalise on wind, sun or some other element:

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Even while they remained in our paddock they would change the site of their little bark huts or guneyahs every eight or ten days, sometimes encamping on one side of the creek, sometimes on the other, and sometimes not moving above twenty or thirty yards from their former situation.48

Indigenous origins of settler bush huts Historic connections between Indigenous architecture and settler ‘bush huts’ have been recognised since the late nineteenth century. In 1910, the correspondent for ‘Weekly Building View’ at the Sydney Star proposed that if a written history of the Australian house were composed, it should begin with Indigenous architecture: the writer might commence with the gunya of the native, then the tent of the early colonist ::: The third period includes the bark hut and its off shoots, the slab house and the dab and wattle humpy.49 In a 1920s article recalling nineteenth-century ‘bushies’ (persons familiar with life in remote areas), one author noted that ‘bushies’ architecture regularly varied from Indigenous-type huts to European-style houses dependent on available materials: in a locality where there was plenty of splitting timber or tea-tree, he rose to the dignity of a humpy of low log walls, roofed with tea-tree bark, or stripped some sheets of stringy bark and built a bark hut.50 A 1936 article on ‘Bush Architecture’ for The Land explained pioneer ‘humpies’ as originating in architecture without vertical walls (a salient feature of most Indigenous huts). This same article identiﬁes the basis of the bushman’s humpy as ‘forked poles’ supporting a ridge pole – another feature of Indigenous building reported by settlers: Today a humpy means any small dwelling hut ::: There was a time, however, when the term denoted a particular type of dwelling – one in which the roof, coming right down to the ground, rendered walls unnecessary. The original humpy was made by placing two forked poles in the ground to support a ridge pole, against which were placed leaning sheets of bark on both sides. The end facing the direction of prevailing winds was closed with upright sheets of bark, the other end being left open. After a time, the term ‘humpy’ was extended to cover buildings of similar construction in which corrugated iron took the place of bark.51

The market for Indigenous housing components European settlers in the 1840s readily admitted to ‘mimicking’ Indigenous bark huts.52 We have many references to bark sheets purchased or traded from Indige- nous groups. In 1841, property manager ‘Cocky’ Rodgers stole 400 sheets of prefabricated bark from the head camp (Humpy Flat) of the Yaggara people near Grantham in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane. The occupants were absent ﬁshing. Rodgers used the sheets to clad a store and hut on a new sheep property near Grantham.53 His theft sparked an armed attack on his and other homesteads, culminating in the Battle of One Tree Hill near Toowoomba in 1843. Of course, as Cahir emphasised, nineteenth-century Europeans placed Indige- nous people ‘on a lower scale of civilisation’. However, they extolled their ‘master

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bushcrafts’.54 Mocking Indigenous architecture as ‘primitive’ and ‘crude’, the settlers nevertheless admired its portability: They [Indigenous people] could not understand the theory of individual property in things that could not be carried about ::: there was no inducement for anyone to make anything that could not be carried away.55 Again and again, we find Europeans remarking on the economy and mobility of Indigenous building materials. Reverend Christopher Eipper wrote that ‘to remove from one place to another costs them little trouble, as they have only to fix three sticks in the form of a triangle in the ground’.56 Fairholme noticed how, ‘in a change of wind, the whole affair (entire structure) is very easily shifted’.57 Reverend Matthews wrote that building had been concentrated into just three or four sheets of bark ‘set obliquely with the lower ends in a semicircle, on the ground, and the upper ends, overlapping, gathered together and supported by light saplings’.58 Thus settlers were interested in Indigenous cladding. In fact, bark sheets became the ‘stable diet’ of settler bush huts, much like corrugated iron or fiberglass sheeting would eventually dominate later housing. As pioneer George Logan recalled, the ‘big useful sheets’ were ‘really a boon to the early settlers’.59 Europeans also realised that Indigenous men could extract larger, longer and better sheets than themselves. They noticed that Indigenous teams did so quicker, with greater precision, quality and quantity than they could achieve themselves. Thus the Indigenous bark-stripping industry was born.

A forgotten industry: Indigenous bark stripping Historian Henry Reynolds found Indigenous ‘diversity of skills added to their usefulness’ as bush workers.60 Pioneers describe Indigenous people ‘invariably’ doing all the work of bark-stripping,61 yet surprisingly little has been written about this once-prosperous industry. The origins of bark-stripping seem to lie in the early timber-getting teams, which were often Indigenous men with their own ‘captains’ (leaders) working for a European boss.62 Such activities created avenues of exchange between Indigenous and settler communities. In Rockhampton, early European ‘cedar camp workers’ ate and played cards with Indigenous crews.63 In other cases – for instance, at Maryborough – Indigenous people were hired as sawyers’ assistants.64 As one pioneer recalled, this timber-focused work transitioned into bark stripping: To find the timber and work it they inevitably secured the services of the ‘niggers,’ because the ‘niggers’ would climb to the top of the tallest trees and look across the tangled mass of foliage for the cedar, &c ::: They were also better bush men in every way, better axemen ::: It was the blackfellow who secured the bark for their houses.65 Settlers noticed Indigenous people were ‘very dexterous in stripping bark’,66 thus we soon find Indigenous people engaged in ‘bark-stripping’ for the benefit of settlers, to the extent that they quickly dominated this industry (Figure 5).67 For example, from the 1860s to the late 1870s, it was Indigenous groups that suppled bark sheeting for the huge camps of railway builders that stretched from Ipswich to Toowoomba.68

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Figure 5. Indigenous man removing bark from tree, Port Macquarie Area, NSW (1905). Photographer Thomas Dick. State Library of New South Wales Collection, call number: At work and play – 04746, FL1691341.

In fact, ‘before the [railway] line was opened, Helidon had a school, a temporary ediﬁce made of bark bought from the blacks’.69 By 1856, a correspondent noticed that Indigenous people were ‘seldom employed in any other occupation than stripping bark’.70 It was sometimes a full-time occupation: ‘Johnny Micarty’ ::: made his living stripping bark, which he sold to the early settlers for rooﬁng for their slab huts ::: Johnny was asked the usual question as to his occupation, to which he proudly replied, ‘Me bark carpenter’.71 It is important to note that bark-strippers were not slaves but sole traders, dictating their interaction with Europeans. Some groups assigned a designate from among themselves to negotiate their terms with settlers. For example, in Queanbeyan in 1859, it was reported that ‘one of the darkies ::: acted as contractor’.72 Often the work was conducted by a group camping en masse on settlers’ properties for extended periods to harvest and prepare consignments requested by local settlers.73 On Jondaryan Station (Darling Downs, Queensland), ‘blacks who collected sheets of bark’ stayed in set, barracks-like accommodation while working.74 Ross Munro informs us that the workers organised their consignments through a tally system:

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each blackboy kept tally of his bark cuts, using a notched stick as a record, and old-timers say they cannot recall an instance when a bark-cutter tried to ‘work a swiftie’ by nicking a few extra notches on his tally.75 An identical system was observed by pioneer Edgar Foreman hundreds of kilometres to the north in the Pine Rivers district: ‘[The] blacks had a rather novel way of counting the number of sheets we required ::: the black would cut notches on a stick corresponding to the order.’76 Payment was usually cash. A visitor to 1860s Gympie remarked ‘they earn a deal of money by getting bark for the diggers and storekeepers’.77 Joseph Dixon recalled Indigenous people on the Sunshine Coast in the 1860s selling bark sheets at ‘20 [shillings] per 100 sheets’.78 At other times, pay was ‘an occasional sheep, a fig of tobacco or some other trifling article in addition to mutton’.79 This sometimes meant a payment of one tobacco fig per sheet.80 Tobacco was used as a currency within both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities to barter for other items.

Indigenous builders and architects Indigenous bark-strippers are recorded ‘preparing’ sheets after cutting them.81 Sheeting shapes and modes of installation were dictated by Indigenous builders (Figure 5). Ross Munro recalled Indigenous people determining sheeting thickness: ‘the Aborigines shunned a thick bark: a bark with depth would crack and split’.82 Building was left up to the Indigenous crews, with pioneers expressing full confi- dence in their skills: ‘they were excellent bush carpenters’.83 Thus Indigenous templates probably influenced early settler architecture. Some- times women built European explorers and missionaries entire dwellings for their stay. ‘They made me a hut wherein I went,’ observed the missionary Christopher Eipper.84 Leichhardt and William Pettigrew had similar experiences. The first pioneers of Far West New South Wales described how Indigenous men and women ‘helped build a little homestead hut and put up yards and fences’.85 A Tennant Creek pioneer similarly remembered that local people ‘helped him to build huts and yards, and always have shown themselves eager to work’.86 In Brisbane during the decades from the 1840s to the 1860s, most migrants would first live temporarily at Fortitude Valley, where – if they had the funds – they paid Indigenous people to strip sheets of stringy bark to build ‘shelter sheds with boughs’ for their first homes.87 As this suggests, buildings were sometimes made to fit European requirements. There is as yet no study on whether such buildings included Indigenous features, or how much they influenced subsequent settler vernacular architecture. Missions were mostly Indigenous-built. For instance, in South Australia Indige- nous men were employed in 1860 in ‘hut-building for the benefit of the ailing and aged’.88 In Tasmania in 1832, Indigenous men ‘assist[ed] actively in any operation of building huts’ for the Reserve.89 This was also true of Fraser Island (1902).90 Mission architecture included schools, missionaries’ and overseers’ homes, dormi- tories, stockyards, halls and churches. Indigenous workers also raised structures outside the missions. The earliest (frontier) pastoral enclosures in South Australia and Western Australia have been found to be Indigenous-built, with Indigenous features.91 Officers’ homes and troopers’ barracks at Native Police establishments were generally Indigenous-built. Sandy Cape lighthouse (Queensland) was erected partly by the Batjala people.92

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In the late 1870s at nearby Caloundra, the Bulcocks’ homestead – a combination hotel-resort, pilot light and ﬁrst European structure of that area – was ‘built by Indigenous labour’.93 A similar history underlies Gympie’s ﬁrst buildings.94

Tracing technology transfer It is now widely accepted that choice of building materials and the associated properties of native timbers were knowledge gleaned from Indigenous sources.95 By 1866, Queensland ‘weapons and samples of Indigenous wood’ were on display in the London Exhibition,96 while in the 1870s William Pettigrew – pioneer of Queensland’s timber industry – gave many civic addresses on information he picked up from Indigenous informants: Korriejung ::: The bark of this tree is fibrous, and it is from it blacks make their dillies, nets, girdles, ropes, and many ornaments ::: The coonton (I do not know of any European name for it) ::: The blacks make their shields from the wood of this tree ::: The nuralkir: This is a scrub wood not known to many whites, and it has peculiar properties ::: The Woggerree (I do not know if this timber has a European name) is a splendid timber, but rather scarce ::: The blacks make their spears (cunnars), war-clubs (nulla nulla), boomerangs (bruggurn), and other articles from this timber ::: I could supply you with a great many more native names of our timbers, and will if you permit me.97 Transfer of construction techniques has proved harder to trace, due to the oral nature of Australian bushcraft. Colonists built up a rich oral lore which they mostly kept to themselves, except when instructing newcomers.98 There were architectural handbooks written for settlers,99 but these discussed pragmatics rather than questions of origin. Problematically, some of the defining characteristics of bush huts and Indigenous architecture also occurred in rural English and colonial (Anglo-African and Anglo- Indian) vernacular architecture. These features include the use of overlapping sheets;100 using crushed termite nests as flooring;101 and relying on bark fibre or greenhide ties instead of nails.102 On the other hand, there are elements for which there seem to have been no Western precedent, which are likely examples of cultural appropriation. Ross Munro remembered that in old bush huts ‘the sheets of bark would be tied close to the ridge of the gable, each sheet overlapping and a curved sheet was put on to form ridge cape’.103 The use of a bark ridge cap, sandwiching sheets between boughs and mounding soil against them at ground level, replicates the Indigenous building technology Thomas Petrie observed near Brisbane (Figure 6).104 Equally, bush hut sheets were usually fixed down with heavy timbers, especially over roofs. This matches Indigenous practice, wherein ‘bark [was] kept in place by heavy sticks leant against it’.105 Some early accounts admit learning from Indigenous sources. A 1904 discussion on the benefits of paperbark cladding concluded that ‘for the white man, who has learnt a wrinkle from him [the native], it is the same [use]’.106 It is more revealing that, in 1851, newcomers to Australia were advised to develop ‘bushcraft’ oppor- tunistically: ‘acquire and retain information from whatever quarter it may be procurable’.107 Newcomers were especially instructed to learn all they could from Indigenous people:

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Figure 6. Various structures at Oxley Creek (Brisbane) 1890, including a wall-less hut with a ridge cap, and slabs mounted with earth. Illustration from The Queenslander, 8 December 1890, p. 1081.

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Much useful information was acquired by our pioneer colonists from these untaught denizens of the wild, and still, we doubt not, many valuable hints might be received by an attentive observation of their habits and proceedings.108 Occasionally, European-built structures were acknowledged to have Indigenous features. Sorensen, who travelled as a swagman throughout much of rural Queens- land during the period from the 1860s to the 1880s, encountered pioneers such as Bill Brooks of Tonki Creek (off the Richmond River), of whom he says: ‘There was a good deal of the Aborigine about Sapling Bill.’ Sorensen makes the observation on account of Brooks’ distinctive sapling home, bedded with ‘mostly possum rugs’ and ﬂoored with ‘ant’s nest and cow dung’.109 Similarly, an old structure that stood near Camden until 1924 was remembered as ‘Jackie’s famous blue-gum bark ::: a strange mixture of the art of aboriginal building ::: [and] a true Australian touch, yet with ::: civic facilities’.110

Limited recognition Considering the wealth of evidence for Indigenous people’s contributions to Australia’s most iconic vernacular architecture, it is surprising that recognition has remained minimal. Several factors may have contributed to this situation. First, as already noted, bushcraft lore was mostly oral. Thus written documentation of technology transfer is very limited. Second, the racial attitudes of nineteenth-century Europeans fostered a reluctance to admit input from other cultures. This was especially so with architecture, because it proved Indigenous people had some form of settled society and ownership over land. Denying something was a ‘house’ or a ‘village’ was pivotal to arguments of terra nullius.111 Another factor was the decreased relevance of ‘bush huts’ as they disappeared from the landscape. By the 1890s, corrugated iron sheets were completely replacing bark sheets in vernacular architecture, to the point where all features of some buildings were constructed from corrugated iron sheets imported from Europe. The earliest corrugated iron sheets entered an Australian port in 1836. Large-scale importation of manufactured galvanised corrugated sheets had been preceded by shipments of prefabricated housing into Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, peaking in the mid- 1830s. By the 1850s, galvanised corrugated iron sheets began arriving as ballast from the United Kingdom in larger quantities, through southern ports.112 They ﬁrst appeared in Queensland around 1864, through the Bowen port. During the 1870s, railway growth enabled iron sheeting to be distributed widely – especially inland.113 By 1891, only nine bark strippers are recorded as still operating in Queensland, although bark huts were built well into the 1910s.114 By 1930, bark huts were viewed as nostalgia or recreation: ‘it is good fun in holiday time to build a hut after the style of the black fellow’s humpy – of small saplings and tea-tree bark’.115 Finally, there was ruthless competition over the required resources, and subsequent restriction of Indigenous industry. When Europeans cut their own bark, Indigenous people (quite rightly) sometimes disputed ownership of the sheets. For instance, when John Petrie established a European bark-stripping team at Brisbane, local Indigenous workers simply took back the resultant sheets and sold them elsewhere: For some time past Mr John Petrie, builder, of this town, has had men employed in the bush stripping bark for the purpose of covering four large sheds in York’s

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Hollow, where to manufacture bricks, such sheets of bark in the interim being stacked in the building yard of the proprietor until required. A reasonable diminution of the quantity having recently been discovered, an enquiry was set on foot, when it was ascertained some of the cut darkies, with which the environs of the town are invested, were in the nightly habit of walking off with portions of the stack, and disposing of them to residents, for a consideration. A vigilant investigation having been set on foot by Mr Petrie, a number of the missing sheets have been ::: given up to the proprietor. One person, a resident in York’s Hollow, however, refuses to give up some which he has purchased from the blacks, unless Mr Petrie will refund him the sum of seven shillings, the price he paid the sons of darkness for them. Mr Petrie, we understand, very justly intends to assert his right to the bark claimed, at the Police Court.116 Similar disputes erupted in Brisbane when fences were erected. Indigenous people would pull up palings and sell them for ﬁrewood.117 Indigenous people viewed management of timber as their business. European ‘bark growers’ and ‘bark strippers’ eventually emerged, competing against Indigenous crews for business.118 By the 1880s and into the 1900s, Indigenous bark strippers were either forced by the Aboriginal Protection Board into ‘small contracts’ or otherwise prohibited from selling their produce – only being entitled to harvest sheets ‘for their own use’.119 The Aboriginal Protection and Restrictions of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 fragmented Indigenous families and economies, restricting Aboriginal labour. Reserves took over payments, forcing Aboriginal groups to live off rations. Most females over twelve years of age were removed for training as domestics in European homes, which meant that many house-builders (women) were no longer available.120 All of this quashed Indigenous entrepreneurship, yet the Sydney Morning Herald was indifferent when, in 1893, it received a letter from Thomas Brown, an Aboriginal, of Currowan Creek, near Nelligen, com- plaining that the local forest ranger had stopped him from stripping bark for sale, and thus taken away his means of earning a livelihood.121

Conclusion Our research reconstructed bark sheet production in early settler bush huts and Indigenous bark cladding. We revealed Indigenous elements in the iconic Australian ‘bush hut’ and reconstructed a forgotten industry: Indigenous bark-stripping and building. European acknowledgement of appropriation of Indigenous knowledge and construction methods was found to be limited but nevertheless evident. Some factors surrounding this silence were considered, including the decline of the industry and deliberate restriction by Europeans through the Aboriginal Protection and Restrictions of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. Our study indicates that much more research is required into transfer of speciﬁc technologies, and the inﬂuence of Indigenous technology and knowledge on a range of Australian architectures. Similarly, the entrepreneurial nature of Indigenous bark-stripping deserves greater attention.

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Notes 1 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. 2 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. 3 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. 4 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. 5 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). 6 Cathy Keys, ‘Preliminary historical notes on the transfer of Aboriginal architectural expertise on Australia’s frontier’, Fabrications 25(1) (2015), 48–61. 7 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. 8 ‘Green-hide and stringy-bark’, Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 26 April 1907, p. 19. 9 ‘Green-hide and stringy-bark, p. 19.

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10 Lewis, Victorian primitive, pp. 9, 15, 17, 28, 67. 11 Evans, The Australian home, pp. 36–7. 12 John Archer, Building a nation: A history of the Australian house (Sydney: William Collins, 1987), pp. 20–3. 13 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. 14 ‘The Australian forest’, The Weekly Register of Politics, Facts and General Literature (Sydney), 6 January 1844, p. 361. 15 ‘Green-hide and stringy-bark’, p. 19. 16 ‘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. 17 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. 18 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. 19 A.C., ‘Twenty years ago’, The Queenslander, 19 December 1885, p. 4. 20 ‘The Ross Munro story: Bark huts’, The Inverell Times, 18 June 1954, p. 8. 21 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. 22 Brian Marsden, ‘A century of building materials in Queensland and Brisbane 1861–1961’, Australian Geographer 10(2) (1966), 123. 23 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. 24 ‘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. 25 Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 22 May 1847, p. 3.3. 26 ‘Ship news’, The Cornwall Chronicle, 14 August 1847, p. 2. 27 ‘Toowomba Police Court’, Toowoomba Chronicle and Queensland Advertiser, 22 September 1864, p. 2. 28 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). 29 Penny Tweddie, Aboriginal Australians: Spirit of Arnhem Land (London: New Holland, 1998), p. 136; Memmott, Gunya, p. 241. 30 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).

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31 L. Haynes, J. Grant and J. Waddell, ‘An Aboriginal plaited grass shelter from Granites, Central Australia’, Mankind 6(10) (1967), 515–16. 32 ‘Green-hide and stringy-bark’, p. 19. 33 Cathy Keys, ‘The architectural implications of Warlpiri Jilimi’, PhD dissertation (Bris- bane: University of Queensland, 1999), p. 213; Memmott, Gunya, pp. 16, 99, 287. 34 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. 35 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 Reminis- cences 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. 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. 40 ‘The Ross Munro story’,p.8. 41 John McConnel, ‘Recollections of the Aborigines around Durundur’, Fryer McConnel Papers, University of Queensland. 42 Long, Scarred trees, p. 12. 43 Long, Scarred trees, p. 12. 44 Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, p. 100. 45 Eugene R. Rudder, ‘Black and white: Early settlement of NSW North Coast’, The Farmer and Settler (Sydney), 25 July 1924, p. 15. 46 ‘Domestic intelligence’, Sydney Herald, 5 May 1841, p. 2; Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminis- cences, p. 100. 47 Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences , p. 100. 48 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. 49 ‘Weekly Building Review’, The Star (Sydney), 17 January 1910, p. 4. 50 ‘The buildings for farmers’, The Bunbury Herald and Blackwood Express, 7 January 1921, p. 2.

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51 ‘Bush architecture of other days’, The Land, 15 May 1936, p. 14. 52 ‘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. 53 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. 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. 58 John Matthew, Two representative tribes of Queensland (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1910), pp. 84–5. 59 O’Brien, The Logan story, p. 51. 60 Henry Reynolds, With the white people (Ringwood: Penguin, 1990), pp. 129, 159. 61 ‘The Ross Munro story’,p.8. 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. 65 ‘The Aboriginal Natives’, The Queenslander, 7 March 1883, p. 419. 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. 68 The Queenslander, 5 May 1928, p. 13. 69 Lockyer District – the History of Helidon, Queensland Times, 28 April 1928, 13. 70 ‘Cooma’,p.6. 71 Corbie Dhu, Allora’s past: The early history of the Allora district (Allora: Allora Guardian, 1930), p. 11. 72 ‘Country news’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 1859, p. 2. 73 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. 74 Jan Walker, ‘The settlement and development of Jondaryan Station’, Honours thesis (Brisbane: University of Queensland, 1957), p. 7. 75 ‘The Ross Munro story’,p.8. 76 Edgar Foreman, The History and Adventures of a Queensland Pioneer (Brisbane: Exchange Printing, pp. 13–14).

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77 ‘News of the week’, The Queenslander, 28 December 1867, p. 5. 78 Joseph Dixon, ‘Reminiscences’, unpublished manuscript (Buderim: Buderim Historical Society, 1928), p. 18. 79 ‘Mackay’, The Queenslander, 22 May 1869, p. 7. 80 ‘The Ross Munro story’,p.8. 81 Collins, ‘Memories of the Blacks’, p. 13; Hartley recalling ‘Early Days in Noosa 1891-1907’, pp. 47–8. 82 ‘The Ross Munro story’,p.8. 83 O’Brien, The Logan Story, p. 51. 84 ‘German Mission – to the Editors of the Sydney Morning Herald’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1842, p. 3. 85 ‘Claypan squatters’, The Sun (Sydney), 30 April 1939, p. 8. 86 The Sun (Sydney), 9 December 1915, p. 9. 87 ‘Nut squad’, In Early ‘Courier’ Days: Places and Persons’, Brisbane Courier, 22 June 1926, p. 32. 88 ‘The Aborigines’, Adelaide Observer, 28 July 1860, p. 6. 89 ‘The Aborigines’, The Hobart Town Courier, 31 August 1832, p. 4. 90 ‘The Aboriginal question in Queensland’, Queensland Country Life, 1 July 1902, p. 14. 91 Nicholas Gill and Alistair Paterson, ‘A work in progress: Aboriginal people and pastoral heritage in Australia’,inGeographies 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). 92 Cathy Keys and Ray Kerkhove, ‘“Lighthouse communities” and Indigenous-settler cultural entanglements: The early architectural history of Southern Queensland’s light- houses and pilot stations’, Queensland History Journal, 24(2) (2019), pp. 213–29. 93 ‘Queensland notes – well named’, Sydney Mail, 24 August 1938, p. 4. 94 ‘News of the week’, The Queenslander, 28 December 1867, p. 5. 95 Lang in Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences, pp. 154–5. 96 Our Correspondent, Brisbane Courier, 31 January 1866, p. 2. 97 The Queenslander, 1 December 1877, p. 12. 98 ‘The production, industry and resources of New South Wales, XIII. Bushcraft’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 September 1851, p. 4. 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). 100 Matthew, Two representative tribes of Queensland, p. 84. 101 Miles Lewis, ‘3. Earth and stone (typescript notes)’,inAustralian 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.

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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. 108 ‘The production, industry and resources of New South Wales, III. Indigenous produc- tions. (Continued.)’ Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 1885, p. 2. 109 E. S. Sorensen, The Australasian, 26 May 1928, p. 6. 110 ‘Cordeaux Dam. Wailing up a river’, Camden News, 18 September 1924, p. 1. 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. 113 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’,inLectures on North Queens- land 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. 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.

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