Slab Hut
Encyclopedia
A Slab Hut is a kind of dwelling
or shed
made from slabs of split or sawn timber
. It was a common form of construction used by settlers in Australia
and New Zealand
during their nations' Colonial
periods.
, arriving in 1788, brought with it few carpenters and a meagre supply of poor-quality tools. Nails and other ironmongery
were scarce. The colonists
were forced to build shelters using whatever skills they possessed, from whatever natural materials they could find. They tried the traditional British wattle and daub
(or 'dab') method: posts were set in the ground; thin branches were woven and set between these posts, and clay or mud was plastered over the weave to make a solid wall. Wattle and daub walls were easily destroyed by the drenching rains of Australia's severe summer storms, and for a time, walls of timber slabs took their place. These were soon replaced by brick structures; the Sydney Cove landscape was almost denuded of useful timber.See for example Thomas Watling A Direct North View of Sydney Cove, 1794 The trees are being rapidly cleared and burned. When settlement moved beyond Sydney Cove, an abundance of suitable forest timber became available. Huts and humpies
made entirely from timber poles and large sheets of bark were easily erected, but these were often only temporary structures.Some log huts were built, but 'the tradition had died out in Europe'. Lewis, Australian Building: A Cultural Investigation 2.02.10 Local timbers presented a fresh challenge to the European settler. Australian hardwood
s were difficult to work, and tools were scarce or inadequate. Australia's colonists were forced to improvise again, and become their own craftsmen.Lewis, 5.02.1. Lewis also notes the local evolution of tools suited for Australian woodworking.
In time, buildings of timber slabs became a familiar feature of rural Australia. Some were public and long-lasting structures: shops, schools and churches; even substantial homesteads were built of slabs.See Lucas, Australian Country Houses. Examples include Cressbrook, Gracemere, The Springs. Others were no more than hovels. As workmanship and tools improved, the slab structure became more permanent and sophisticated, eventually to become an icon of Colonial Australia, as evocative of time and place and humble beginnings as the thatched cottage
of an English village or the log cabin
of Early America.In a letter dated 1844, a settler wrote that the word 'hut' was the preferred local usage over 'cottage', for her slab dwelling. (see Starr, Pioneering New England) but another, writing in 1817 of his new slab home, noted 'My wife said that she didn't like me to call it a hut, so I made a memo, to call it a cottage.' (see Thornley The Adventures of an Immigrant p. 43).
(house), instead of 'hut', for a temporary or pioneer dwelling.
The usual slab hut was built entirely from timber and bark. Australian settlers found that the most fissile timbers were the Eucalypts: blackbutt
, bluegum
, stringybark
, ironbark
and turpentine
. Some of these species are also termite
resistant. The chimney, too, was often made of wood, although sometimes sods were used. The fireplace may have been given a lining of stones, sometimes covered with a plaster of mud or clay.
In New Zealand
Settlers used a thatch
of raupo, toitoi
, flax
, fern
, or totara bark; they erected tents from poles, saplings, canvas, and planks or split slabs; and made tree-fern
huts or more permanent dwellings from clay, sods, wattle and daub, or stone.
Walls
A slab hut is actually a 'slab-walled' structure. Its walls were, strictly speaking, built from 'flitches'. Slabs are sawn from a trunk, flitches are split from it. Sydney J. Baker states that this Australian use of 'slab' dates from 1829. Baker, The Australian Language Chapter IV: 3 'Dwellings' Hut-builders felled selected trees,Rawson, Australian Enquiry Book recommends trees ten inches in diameter as likely to be both sound, and easiest to handle. and sawed the trunks into suitable lengths.Harris gives eight feet for this length (Harris, Chapter V) others give ten feet. (Lewis, 2.03.3) They then split these lengths into flitches using a maul and a wedge.Lewis notes that by the 1840s, traveling teams of sawyers could be hired for this work Timber was split tangentially, that is, along the grain, instead of by the traditional British radial method, from the core of the trunk out towards the bark. There was neither time nor tools suitable to properly dress timber into planks, nor to season the timber; it was used green
.
Roofs and Ceilings
Rafter
s would be fixed atop the slab walls, and a pitched roof erected. The dimensions of the hut would be kept small, to avoid the need for roof trusses. Joist
s were not always laid, and a ceiling was not always included. A Queensland example can be seen here. If a ceiling was added, it was chiefly used for storage. Slab dwellings with a second storey
were almost unknown.
A bark roof was common, and was quickly and easily erected.
Thatching was less common, but cumbungi
(rushes), and blady grass were used if available. Later, when crops were grown, straw was used. For a more permanent dwelling shingles
would be cut. The cabbage tree palm
was found most suitable, and later the she-oak
. In later years, galvanised iron became a popular roofing material, due to its cheapness and durability. Sometimes this was laid over the original shingles.Henry Lawson commented, however, 'God forgive the man who invented galvanised iron, and the greed which introduced it into Australia: you could not get a worse roofing material for a hot country.' Lawson, Stragglers Mrs Gunn noted that 'Great sheets of bark... were packed a foot deep above the rafters to break the heat reflected from the iron roof, while beneath it the calico ceiling was tacked up.'
Linings, Plasters and Claddings
Whether or not a slab hut was lined, inside or out, depended on the economic means, the energy and skill, and the taste of the occupants. Beyond the need for simple weatherproofing lay the desire for some aesthetic
satisfaction, the wish to make one's dwelling place pleasing in appearance as well as comfortable to occupy.
Batten
s might be nailed over the gaps between slabs, or the entire exterior might be clad
with weatherboards.
The exterior might then be painted, using mixes of materials as diverse as skim milk, quick-lime
, lampblack
and cement
or plastered over entirely. All these measures were less to do with appearance than with preservation of the fabric of the building.
The interior might have a coating of plaster made from a variety of available ingredients: mud, clay, cow-dung. The inside face of the slabs might be whitewashed, or have newspaper pasted over them. More elaborate linings might cover the ceiling, and include sailcloth
, hessian, calico, osnaburg
, even wallpaper, cretonne or chintz. Mrs Aeneas Gunn describes making 'a huge mosquito-netted dining room, big enough to enclose the table and chairs, so as to ensure our meals in comfort... we hoped to find a paradise at mealtimes in comparison with the purgatory of the last few months.'
Floors
Floors might consist of the original ground upon which the hut was erected, but various mixtures of sand, clay, cow-dung, and similar materials were laid to make a firmer, more level, or harder-wearing indoor surface. Termite mounds, crushed and watered, had many of the properties of poured concrete
when used as flooring material. Termites mix their saliva
, faeces
and other substances to bind soil particles and form their mound: this type of flooring was known as 'ant bed'. All of these substances or mixes required regular maintenance, either by watering them to re-solidify the materials, or by spreading a new layer of mixture on top.
Timber slabs might also be laid directly on the earth to form a floor. More sophisticated and permanent dwellings had properly sawn floorboards nailed onto bearers
.
The basic slab hut derived its plan from the vernacular English crofter's
hut, a simple rectangular walled shelter with one door, and perhaps holes to allow air to enter. The interior spaces might later be partitioned off. To this design Australian settlers often added a verandah
.
Most slab-hut construction techniques could be described as bush carpentry
. Few early settlers could afford the time, or possessed the capital, to build any dwelling more impressive than a slab hut: they had first to clear their land and get a crop planted or pasture fenced. In later years, according to the terms of their purchase, selectors
had to erect and occupy a dwelling on their land as soon as possible.This was to prevent 'dummying'. Wealthy squatters
bought up multiple lots in the name of their agent or relatives (a 'dummy' owner), to discourage selectors by making good land hard to get. On the goldfields, or timber-getting, only a temporary dwelling, produced quickly from available materials, was thought necessary.
Since a majority of early settlers had formerly been manual labourers, they brought with them a sound practical ability and aptitude for 'making do'; other settlers observed or helped those more skilled and copied their techniques. The average settler could thus erect a basic hut in two or three weeks, adding to or modifying it later.
The two preferred methods of slab hut construction differed chiefly in the placement of the wall slabs: vertically or horizontally.
Vertical Slab Wall
Alexander Harris
described the vertical method of slab hut construction:
Surgeon Peter Cunnigham
, advising potential settlers, described a similar method, and added:
If only a top plate
was used, the top of each slab was pushed up into the groove (a mortise
). The bottom of the slab was merely set into a trench. When a wall bottom plate was used, it was also mortised.Edwards, Australian Traditional Bush crafts p.19 observes that such a groove would fill with rainwater; a half-groove was preferred. Each slab was slid in at one end of these plates; on the bottom plate, an extra piece was cut out at one end of the groove to widen it and allow each slab to be fitted in: this piece was replaced after the last slab was inserted. Another method was to make a much deeper mortise in the top plate. In this case, each slab was lifted up into the deep top groove and then dropped into the bottom one. A third method was to nail planks either side of the wall plates to form a channel to hold the slabs, instead of mortising. This was a much quicker method of construction, but it required the use of sawn and dressed timber, and nails. Slabs were sometimes chamfer
ed at one or both ends to fit into the mortises. Each method took more time and labour, and used more material, but produced a progressively more sophisticated and permanent structure.
Mrs Aeneas Gunn wrote of their Northern Territory
homestead:
In this case, too, instead of grooving the posts, a channel might be made by nailing battens either side of the uprights, and the slabs fitted inside these.
It is not clear which of these two methods was the more popular.Archer p. 68, claims the horizontal method was more favoured; Lewis, 2.04.11 suggests the opposite. Examples of each remain. The shearing shed shown in this illustration c. 1890 has walls of both vertical and horizontal slabs; the latter may have been a later addition. The horizontal method had the advantage that shorter slabs (known as 'billets') of timber could be used, but more uprights had to be erected and mortised to hold these.
Australian literature
.
In works of fiction
, Henry Lawson's
Drover's Wife lives in a slab hut; so does his Bush Undertaker,
and much of A Day on a Selection is set in or around one. A horizontal-slab shearing shed is the scene for Stragglers, and Lawson remarks of this makeshift structure, '... the whole business reminds us of the "cubby house" style of architecture of our childhood.'
Miles Franklin's
Sybylla Melvyn grew up in a 'comfortable, wide-veranda'ed, irregularly built slab house' in the Timlinbilly Ranges and she was educated at 'Stringybark Hill Public... a little slab school house.' Richard Mahony hurriedly renovates his goldfields house and general store, so it will be fit for his new wife to occupy 'That her ears should not be polluted by the worst language of the customers he ran up a partition... cutting off the slab-walled portion of the house, with its roof of stringy-bark, from the log and canvas front. He also stopped with putty the worst gaps between the slabs...' Geoffrey Hamlyn recollects 'the old slab hut' at Baroona 'now quite overwhelmed' by the new, long, low house, the result of 'dull, stupid prosperity'.
Steele Rudd's
Our New Selection describes the first house his farming family built:
In biographical
writings, Louisa Anne Meredith
considered such 'habitations... the least pleasing objects one meets with in this colony,' but her objections were chiefly to the poor initial construction and subsequent neglect of those dwellings. This arose, she claimed, from the high wages paid due to the shortage of labour, and therefore the idleness and drunkenness of the 'working classes'. Writing of a convict-owned and operated theatre
, Ralph Rashleigh says 'The theatre.... had few external charms. It was formed only of slabs and bark; yet the interstices of the walls being filled in with mud, and the whole of the interior whitewashed with pipeclay, of which there was abundance near, it produced no despicable effect by candlelight.'Tucker, Ralph Rashleigh Chapter XII. He also describes several other slab structures, and the problems caused by use of unseasoned timber
Rachel Henning
describes the construction of their slab-built homestead
on their Queensland
station
. The house was relocated during her time there. Henning remarks, 'It is not much to move a slab house; all the woodwork takes down and puts up again; some of the roof may have to be new, but nothing else.'
Mrs Aeneas Gunn writes of the satisfaction derived from building their slab homestead, 'beginning at the beginning of things': choosing, felling and sawing their own timber. In his A Fortunate Life
, Bert Facey describes his method of building a slab house for a farmer, having watched and helped others to build such structures several times during his life.
In the Shadow of the Bush (1899):
A Maori Maid (1898):
The landscapes of Augustus Earle
, and S.T. Gill
usually show one or more slab structures; Gill even illustrated the process of splitting timber for slabs. William Strutt's sketch of a settler's hut shows the tools used to build it, while John Skinner Prout
's Interior of Settlers Hut Australia emphasizes the crudity of technique and bulkiness of the timbers. It also shows the timber fireplace and chimney. Strutt in 1856, also sketched a New Zealand settler's 'whorry' William Swainson, John Barr Clark Hoyte, Frances Mary Hodges and Charles Blomfield, among others, produced paintings of slab whares and other structures. Images of works by these artists are available on-line at the Alexander Turnbull Library
The deterioration of the hut depicted by Nicholas Chevalier
in his Buffalo Ranges supports Louisa Meredith's observation about poor upkeep by many hut occupants. Unk White's
1960s sketches of Tyrrell's Vineyard in the Hunter Valley include a slab hut dating from 1858.
The 'backblocks' humour of Australian cartoonists of the Smith's Weekly
school such as Alex Gurney
, Percy Leason, Stan Cross
and Eric Jolliffe
often included slab huts as a backdrop
to their gags
. Jolliffe also published detailed sketches of slab structures still standing, to preserve Australian heritage. In journalism
, illustrations of rural towns and farms in Australian newspapers and magazines of the Colonial era often show slab huts and homes. Examples can be seen in The Australasian Sketcher,See The Australasian Sketcher Nov. 1878. The slab hut depicted in this issue near Stringybark Creek was allegedly occupied by the Kelly Gang.
The Sydney Mail
and Sydney Punch.
of New South Wales.
It varies from the traditional design in several respects. It is raised off the ground on stumps (Fig. 5); the slab walls are of sawn timber, not flitches split from a trunk (Fig 2.); it uses the nailed 'channel' method of holding the slabs, not mortises; the spaces between the slabs are filled with foam-rubber
strips (Fig. 5); no attempt has been made to line or clad the house (Fig. 3); it has no chimney or fireplace as part of the structure; the floor is of chipboard
.
More akin to traditional structures, the roof has no joist
s, and there is no ceiling; the entire pitch of the roof forms the interior space, allowing for cooling in summer; the gable-ends
are framed with studs
and filled in with weatherboards
(Fig. 4). The walls are kept square by a mezzanine floor
, reached by an internal spiral staircase, making the house in effect a two-storey
structure (Fig. 3).
Dwelling
Dwelling, as well as being a term for a house, or for living somewhere, or for lingering somewhere, is a philosophical concept which was developed by Martin Heidegger. Dwelling is about making yourself at home where the home itself is a building that is a house...
or shed
Shed
A shed is typically a simple, single-storey structure in a back garden or on an allotment that is used for storage, hobbies, or as a workshop....
made from slabs of split or sawn timber
Timber
Timber may refer to:* Timber, a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for wood materials * Timber, Oregon, an unincorporated community in the U.S...
. It was a common form of construction used by settlers in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
during their nations' Colonial
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
periods.
The Australian Settler
From the very beginning of European settlement in Australia, improvised methods of building construction were in use. The First FleetFirst Fleet
The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships which sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787 with about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts , to establish the first European colony in Australia, in the region which Captain Cook had named New South Wales. The fleet was led by Captain ...
, arriving in 1788, brought with it few carpenters and a meagre supply of poor-quality tools. Nails and other ironmongery
Ironmongery
Ironmongery originally referred both to the manufacture, and the place of sale of iron goods produced for domestic rather than industrial use. The usage of the term has expanded in recent times to include consumer goods made of aluminium, brass, or other metals, as well as plastics...
were scarce. The colonists
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
were forced to build shelters using whatever skills they possessed, from whatever natural materials they could find. They tried the traditional British wattle and daub
Wattle and daub
Wattle and daub is a composite building material used for making walls, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw...
(or 'dab') method: posts were set in the ground; thin branches were woven and set between these posts, and clay or mud was plastered over the weave to make a solid wall. Wattle and daub walls were easily destroyed by the drenching rains of Australia's severe summer storms, and for a time, walls of timber slabs took their place. These were soon replaced by brick structures; the Sydney Cove landscape was almost denuded of useful timber.See for example Thomas Watling A Direct North View of Sydney Cove, 1794 The trees are being rapidly cleared and burned. When settlement moved beyond Sydney Cove, an abundance of suitable forest timber became available. Huts and humpies
Humpy
A humpy is a small, temporary shelter made from bark and tree branches, traditionally used by Australian Aborigines, with a standing tree usually used as the main support...
made entirely from timber poles and large sheets of bark were easily erected, but these were often only temporary structures.Some log huts were built, but 'the tradition had died out in Europe'. Lewis, Australian Building: A Cultural Investigation 2.02.10 Local timbers presented a fresh challenge to the European settler. Australian hardwood
Hardwood
Hardwood is wood from angiosperm trees . It may also be used for those trees themselves: these are usually broad-leaved; in temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen.Hardwood contrasts with softwood...
s were difficult to work, and tools were scarce or inadequate. Australia's colonists were forced to improvise again, and become their own craftsmen.Lewis, 5.02.1. Lewis also notes the local evolution of tools suited for Australian woodworking.
In time, buildings of timber slabs became a familiar feature of rural Australia. Some were public and long-lasting structures: shops, schools and churches; even substantial homesteads were built of slabs.See Lucas, Australian Country Houses. Examples include Cressbrook, Gracemere, The Springs. Others were no more than hovels. As workmanship and tools improved, the slab structure became more permanent and sophisticated, eventually to become an icon of Colonial Australia, as evocative of time and place and humble beginnings as the thatched cottage
Thatching
Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge , rushes, or heather, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. It is a very old roofing method and has been used in both tropical and temperate climates...
of an English village or the log cabin
Log cabin
A log cabin is a house built from logs. It is a fairly simple type of log house. A distinction should be drawn between the traditional meanings of "log cabin" and "log house." Historically most "Log cabins" were a simple one- or 1½-story structures, somewhat impermanent, and less finished or less...
of Early America.In a letter dated 1844, a settler wrote that the word 'hut' was the preferred local usage over 'cottage', for her slab dwelling. (see Starr, Pioneering New England) but another, writing in 1817 of his new slab home, noted 'My wife said that she didn't like me to call it a hut, so I made a memo, to call it a cottage.' (see Thornley The Adventures of an Immigrant p. 43).
The New Zealand Settler
New Zealand's European settlers also had to adapt to local circumstances, building with whatever materials were available, and employing tools of poor quality, or even none at all. Settlers tended to use the Maori word whareMarae
A marae malae , malae , is a communal or sacred place which serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies...
(house), instead of 'hut', for a temporary or pioneer dwelling.
"Ten pounds will go a long way towards putting up a sod hut; a cabin of outside slabs and refuse timber from the sawmills, or a serviceable tent with timber frame and sod chimney, sufficient to protect the inmates from the weather, and afford a temporary home at all events. There is, too, one great advantage [to] the immigrants hampering themselves at first with only slender households, for they may very soon find it to their interest to change their place of abode, in order to secure higher wages or engage in more congenial occupations..."
Materials
In AustraliaThe usual slab hut was built entirely from timber and bark. Australian settlers found that the most fissile timbers were the Eucalypts: blackbutt
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
, bluegum
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
, stringybark
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
, ironbark
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
and turpentine
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
. Some of these species are also termite
Termite
Termites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...
resistant. The chimney, too, was often made of wood, although sometimes sods were used. The fireplace may have been given a lining of stones, sometimes covered with a plaster of mud or clay.
In New Zealand
Settlers used a thatch
Thatching
Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge , rushes, or heather, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. It is a very old roofing method and has been used in both tropical and temperate climates...
of raupo, toitoi
Toetoe
Toetoe are four species of tall grasses native to New Zealand and members of the Cortaderia genus. The species are C. toetoe, C. fulvida, C. splendens and C. richardii. The name toetoe comes from the Māori language.Two closely related South America species of Cortaderia, C. jubata and C...
, flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...
, fern
Fern
A fern is any one of a group of about 12,000 species of plants belonging to the botanical group known as Pteridophyta. Unlike mosses, they have xylem and phloem . They have stems, leaves, and roots like other vascular plants...
, or totara bark; they erected tents from poles, saplings, canvas, and planks or split slabs; and made tree-fern
Cyatheales
The order Cyatheales is a taxonomic division of the fern subclass, Cyatheatae, which includes the tree ferns. No clear morphological features characterize all of the Cyatheales, but DNA sequence data indicates that the order is monophyletic. Some species in the Cyatheales have tree-like growth...
huts or more permanent dwellings from clay, sods, wattle and daub, or stone.
Walls
A slab hut is actually a 'slab-walled' structure. Its walls were, strictly speaking, built from 'flitches'. Slabs are sawn from a trunk, flitches are split from it. Sydney J. Baker states that this Australian use of 'slab' dates from 1829. Baker, The Australian Language Chapter IV: 3 'Dwellings' Hut-builders felled selected trees,Rawson, Australian Enquiry Book recommends trees ten inches in diameter as likely to be both sound, and easiest to handle. and sawed the trunks into suitable lengths.Harris gives eight feet for this length (Harris, Chapter V) others give ten feet. (Lewis, 2.03.3) They then split these lengths into flitches using a maul and a wedge.Lewis notes that by the 1840s, traveling teams of sawyers could be hired for this work Timber was split tangentially, that is, along the grain, instead of by the traditional British radial method, from the core of the trunk out towards the bark. There was neither time nor tools suitable to properly dress timber into planks, nor to season the timber; it was used green
Green wood
Green wood is a term used to describe wood products that have been recently cut and have therefore not had an opportunity to "season" by evaporation of the internal moisture. The term is used often in describing the relative moisture content of wood products such as firewood and lumber...
.
Roofs and Ceilings
Rafter
Rafter
A rafter is one of a series of sloped structural members , that extend from the ridge or hip to the downslope perimeter or eave, designed to support the roof deck and its associated loads.-Design:...
s would be fixed atop the slab walls, and a pitched roof erected. The dimensions of the hut would be kept small, to avoid the need for roof trusses. Joist
Joist
A joist, in architecture and engineering, is one of the horizontal supporting members that run from wall to wall, wall to beam, or beam to beam to support a ceiling, roof, or floor. It may be made of wood, steel, or concrete. Typically, a beam is bigger than, and is thus distinguished from, a joist...
s were not always laid, and a ceiling was not always included. A Queensland example can be seen here. If a ceiling was added, it was chiefly used for storage. Slab dwellings with a second storey
Storey
A storey or story is any level part of a building that could be used by people...
were almost unknown.
A bark roof was common, and was quickly and easily erected.
'... the roof [was] covered with forest box or stringy-bark, which was stripped from the
living trees in sheets of about six feet long and from two to four feet
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 kurrajongBrachychitonBrachychiton is a genus of 31 species of trees and large shrubs, native to Australia , and New Guinea . Fossils from New South Wales and New Zealand are estimated to be 50 million years old, corresponding to the Tertiary.They grow to 4 – 30m tall, and some are dry-season deciduous...
tree. The whole framing of the roof
was secured as it was needed by wooden pins in order to save the expense
of nails, which were then both too scarce and too dear to be used by the
lower order of settlers.
Indeed, all kinds of ironwork were equally inaccessible, and instead of
hinges to tie doors or window shutters, those appurtenances were all made
to revolve on wooden pivots in holes, bored a short distance into the
corresponding parts of the frames.
Thatching was less common, but cumbungi
Typha domingensis
Typha domingensis Pers., also known as Southern Cattail or Cumbungi, is a perennial herbaceous plant of genus Typha.It is found throughout temperate and tropical regions worldwide...
(rushes), and blady grass were used if available. Later, when crops were grown, straw was used. For a more permanent dwelling shingles
Roof shingle
Roof shingles are a roof covering consisting of individual overlapping elements. These elements are typically flat rectangular shapes laid in rows from the bottom edge of the roof up, with each successive higher row overlapping the joints in the row below...
would be cut. The cabbage tree palm
Livistona australis
The Cabbage-tree Palm is in the Arecaceae family. It is a tall, slender palm growing up to about 25 m in height and 0.35 m diameter. It is crowned with dark, glossy green leaves on petioles 2 m long. It has leaves plaited like a fan; the cabbage of these is small but sweet...
was found most suitable, and later the she-oak
Casuarinaceae
Casuarinaceae is a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants placed in the order Fagales, consisting of 3 or 4 genera and approximately 70 species of trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics , Australia, and the Pacific Islands...
. In later years, galvanised iron became a popular roofing material, due to its cheapness and durability. Sometimes this was laid over the original shingles.Henry Lawson commented, however, 'God forgive the man who invented galvanised iron, and the greed which introduced it into Australia: you could not get a worse roofing material for a hot country.' Lawson, Stragglers Mrs Gunn noted that 'Great sheets of bark... were packed a foot deep above the rafters to break the heat reflected from the iron roof, while beneath it the calico ceiling was tacked up.'
Linings, Plasters and Claddings
Whether or not a slab hut was lined, inside or out, depended on the economic means, the energy and skill, and the taste of the occupants. Beyond the need for simple weatherproofing lay the desire for some aesthetic
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
satisfaction, the wish to make one's dwelling place pleasing in appearance as well as comfortable to occupy.
Batten
Batten
A batten is a thin strip of solid material, typically made from wood, plastic or metal. Battens are used in building construction and various other fields as both structural and purely cosmetic elements...
s might be nailed over the gaps between slabs, or the entire exterior might be clad
Cladding (construction)
Cladding is the application of one material over another to provide a skin or layer intended to control the infiltration of weather elements, or for aesthetic purposes....
with weatherboards.
Weatherboarding
Weatherboarding is the cladding or ‘siding’ of a house consisting of long thin timber boards that overlap one another, either vertically or horizontally on the outside of the wall. They are usually of rectangular section with parallel sides...
The exterior might then be painted, using mixes of materials as diverse as skim milk, quick-lime
Calcium oxide
Calcium oxide , commonly known as quicklime or burnt lime, is a widely used chemical compound. It is a white, caustic, alkaline crystalline solid at room temperature....
, lampblack
Soot
Soot is a general term that refers to impure carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of a hydrocarbon. It is more properly restricted to the product of the gas-phase combustion process but is commonly extended to include the residual pyrolyzed fuel particles such as cenospheres,...
and cement
Cement
In the most general sense of the word, a cement is a binder, a substance that sets and hardens independently, and can bind other materials together. The word "cement" traces to the Romans, who used the term opus caementicium to describe masonry resembling modern concrete that was made from crushed...
or plastered over entirely. All these measures were less to do with appearance than with preservation of the fabric of the building.
'The split timbers are put in quite rough, and chipped all over with the axe to insure adhesion of the coat of plasterPlasterPlaster is a building material used for coating walls and ceilings. Plaster starts as a dry powder similar to mortar or cement and like those materials it is mixed with water to form a paste which liberates heat and then hardens. Unlike mortar and cement, plaster remains quite soft after setting,...
. This plaster is composed of alluvial soil, mixed with a portion of cow-dung to prevent it from cracking, and with chopped grass to enable it to adhere, the coat being put on with a light spade and smoothed over with a plasterer's trowel. It is run over occasionally afterwards with the trowel to fill in the cracks; and on being quite dry, whitewashWhitewashWhitewash, or calcimine, kalsomine, calsomine, or lime paint is a very low-cost type of paint made from slaked lime and chalk . Various other additives are also used...
ed with lime, plaster of Paris, or apple-tree ashes and sour milk, the latter forming a tolerable substitute for lime as whitewash.'
The interior might have a coating of plaster made from a variety of available ingredients: mud, clay, cow-dung. The inside face of the slabs might be whitewashed, or have newspaper pasted over them. More elaborate linings might cover the ceiling, and include sailcloth
Sailcloth
Sails have been made from cloth for all of recorded history. Typically sails were made from flax , hemp or cotton in various forms including canvas. However, modern sails are rarely made from natural fibers. Most sails are made from synthetic fibers ranging from low-cost nylon or polyester to...
, hessian, calico, osnaburg
Osnaburg
Osnaburg was a coarse type of plain textile fabric, named for the city of Osnabrück . Originally made from flax yarns, it has been made from either flax, tow or jute yarns, sometimes flax or tow warp with mixed or jute weft, and often entirely of jute...
, even wallpaper, cretonne or chintz. Mrs Aeneas Gunn describes making 'a huge mosquito-netted dining room, big enough to enclose the table and chairs, so as to ensure our meals in comfort... we hoped to find a paradise at mealtimes in comparison with the purgatory of the last few months.'
Floors
Floors might consist of the original ground upon which the hut was erected, but various mixtures of sand, clay, cow-dung, and similar materials were laid to make a firmer, more level, or harder-wearing indoor surface. Termite mounds, crushed and watered, had many of the properties of poured concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
when used as flooring material. Termites mix their saliva
Saliva
Saliva , referred to in various contexts as spit, spittle, drivel, drool, or slobber, is the watery substance produced in the mouths of humans and most other animals. Saliva is a component of oral fluid. In mammals, saliva is produced in and secreted from the three pairs of major salivary glands,...
, faeces
Feces
Feces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...
and other substances to bind soil particles and form their mound: this type of flooring was known as 'ant bed'. All of these substances or mixes required regular maintenance, either by watering them to re-solidify the materials, or by spreading a new layer of mixture on top.
Timber slabs might also be laid directly on the earth to form a floor. More sophisticated and permanent dwellings had properly sawn floorboards nailed onto bearers
Beam (structure)
A beam is a horizontal structural element that is capable of withstanding load primarily by resisting bending. The bending force induced into the material of the beam as a result of the external loads, own weight, span and external reactions to these loads is called a bending moment.- Overview...
.
Design and Construction
Croft (land)
A croft is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable with a crofter's dwelling thereon. A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a tenant farmer.- Etymology :...
hut, a simple rectangular walled shelter with one door, and perhaps holes to allow air to enter. The interior spaces might later be partitioned off. To this design Australian settlers often added a verandah
Verandah
A veranda or verandah is a roofed opened gallery or porch. It is also described as an open pillared gallery, generally roofed, built around a central structure...
.
Most slab-hut construction techniques could be described as bush carpentry
Bush carpentry
Bush Carpentry is an expression used in Australia and New Zealand that refers to improvised methods of building or repair, using available materials and an ad hoc design, usually in a pioneering or rural context.-The tradition:...
. Few early settlers could afford the time, or possessed the capital, to build any dwelling more impressive than a slab hut: they had first to clear their land and get a crop planted or pasture fenced. In later years, according to the terms of their purchase, selectors
Selection (Australian history)
Selection referred to "free selection before survey" of crown land in some Australian colonies under land legislation introduced in the 1860s. These acts were similar to the United States Homestead Act and were intended to encourage closer settlement, based on intensive agriculture, such as...
had to erect and occupy a dwelling on their land as soon as possible.This was to prevent 'dummying'. Wealthy squatters
Squatting (pastoral)
In Australian history, a squatter was one who occupied a large tract of Crown land in order to graze livestock. Initially often having no legal rights to the land, they gained its usage by being the first Europeans in the area....
bought up multiple lots in the name of their agent or relatives (a 'dummy' owner), to discourage selectors by making good land hard to get. On the goldfields, or timber-getting, only a temporary dwelling, produced quickly from available materials, was thought necessary.
Since a majority of early settlers had formerly been manual labourers, they brought with them a sound practical ability and aptitude for 'making do'; other settlers observed or helped those more skilled and copied their techniques. The average settler could thus erect a basic hut in two or three weeks, adding to or modifying it later.
The two preferred methods of slab hut construction differed chiefly in the placement of the wall slabs: vertically or horizontally.
Vertical Slab Wall
Alexander Harris
Alexander Harris (writer)
Alexander Harris was a soldier, teacher and author known for his early fictional accounts of convict life in Australia.He arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1825 and returned to London, England in 1841....
described the vertical method of slab hut construction:
The first step of its erection was digging post-holes,
of about two feet deep... in which were placed posts ten feet high,
squared on the four sides with the axe... Along the
ground between these... were laid ground-plates and wall-plates... having a groove of
about an inch and a half wide and two inches deep mortised into the flat
sides their whole length. Into these grooves were fitted the two ends of
the eight-feet slabs we had split with the maul and wedges... The flooringboards... were six inches wide and one [inch] thick; timber being used so green, and the heat being so great, boards
of any greater width turn up at the edges, so as in time to look like a row
of spouts. The rooms were all joisted at top, and on the joists was spread
a floor of bark, so as to form, over the whole top of the house, the
settler's usual first rude granaryGranaryA granary is a storehouse for threshed grain or animal feed. In ancient or primitive granaries, pottery is the most common use of storage in these buildings. Granaries are often built above the ground to keep the stored food away from mice and other animals.-Early origins:From ancient times grain...
. Squares of a couple of feet..
were left open in the wall in various places for windows... The chimneys were large,
like those of old farm-houses, and, for security, had a little wall of rough
stone and mortar run up inside about three feet; and in the middle of the
fire-place was a large flag-stone, of a sort capable of resisting the fire,
which constituted the hearth and baking-place.
Surgeon Peter Cunnigham
Peter Miller Cunningham
Peter Miller Cunningham was a Scottish naval surgeon and pioneer in Australia.Cunningham, fifth son of John Cunningham, land steward and farmer , and brother of Thomas Mounsey Cunningham and of Allan Cunningham , was born at Dalswinton, near Dumfries, in November 1789, and was named after that...
, advising potential settlers, described a similar method, and added:
... by this means a wooden house may be put up without having more than a dozen nails in its composition. I have known the frame of a house of this description, twenty-four feet long by twelve broad, with a back-skilling, or lean-to, of the same length seven feet wide attached to it, put up for the small sum of eight poundsPound (currency)The pound is a unit of currency in some nations. The term originated in England as the value of a pound of silver.The word pound is the English translation of the Latin word libra, which was the unit of account of the Roman Empire...
, exclusive of plastering. The house was thatched, had a chimney, and was divided into four compartments ; and with the additional plastering, whitewashing, and fitting of doors and windows, I do not think exceeded twenty pounds... A veranda tends materially to the coolness of the habitation, by sheltering the walls from the sun...
If only a top plate
Wall plate
A wall plate, a structural element in the light frame construction method known as platform framing, is a horizontally laid structural element at right angles to the load-bearing part of the vertical load of a building...
was used, the top of each slab was pushed up into the groove (a mortise
Mortise and tenon
The mortise and tenon joint has been used for thousands of years by woodworkers around the world to join pieces of wood, mainly when the adjoining pieces connect at an angle of 90°. In its basic form it is both simple and strong. Although there are many joint variations, the basic mortise and tenon...
). The bottom of the slab was merely set into a trench. When a wall bottom plate was used, it was also mortised.Edwards, Australian Traditional Bush crafts p.19 observes that such a groove would fill with rainwater; a half-groove was preferred. Each slab was slid in at one end of these plates; on the bottom plate, an extra piece was cut out at one end of the groove to widen it and allow each slab to be fitted in: this piece was replaced after the last slab was inserted. Another method was to make a much deeper mortise in the top plate. In this case, each slab was lifted up into the deep top groove and then dropped into the bottom one. A third method was to nail planks either side of the wall plates to form a channel to hold the slabs, instead of mortising. This was a much quicker method of construction, but it required the use of sawn and dressed timber, and nails. Slabs were sometimes chamfer
Chamfer
A chamfer is a beveled edge connecting two surfaces. If the surfaces are at right angles, the chamfer will typically be symmetrical at 45 degrees. A fillet is the rounding off of an interior corner. A rounding of an exterior corner is called a "round" or a "radius"."Chamfer" is a term commonly...
ed at one or both ends to fit into the mortises. Each method took more time and labour, and used more material, but produced a progressively more sophisticated and permanent structure.
Vertical Slab Walled Church circa 1838
Horizontal Slab WallMrs Aeneas Gunn wrote of their Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
homestead:
The walls are erected by what is known as the drop-slab-panel system - upright panels formed of three-foot slabs cut from the outside slice of tree-trunks, and dropped horizontally, one above the other, between grooved posts - a simple arrangement, quickly run up and artistic in appearance - outside, a horizontally fluted surface, formed by the natural curves of the timber, and inside, flat, smooth walls.Lewis 2.04.11, disputes the generality of the term 'drop-slab-system' for horizontal slabbing, and suggests that it derives from Mrs Gunn herself. As in every third panel there was a door or a window, and as the horizontal slabs stopped within two feet of the ceiling, the building was exceedingly airy, and open on all sides.
In this case, too, instead of grooving the posts, a channel might be made by nailing battens either side of the uprights, and the slabs fitted inside these.
It is not clear which of these two methods was the more popular.Archer p. 68, claims the horizontal method was more favoured; Lewis, 2.04.11 suggests the opposite. Examples of each remain. The shearing shed shown in this illustration c. 1890 has walls of both vertical and horizontal slabs; the latter may have been a later addition. The horizontal method had the advantage that shorter slabs (known as 'billets') of timber could be used, but more uprights had to be erected and mortised to hold these.
In Australian Literature
The slab hut is mentioned often in classicClassic
The word classic means something that is a perfect example of a particular style, something of lasting worth or with a timeless quality. The word can be an adjective or a noun . It denotes a particular quality in art, architecture, literature and other cultural artifacts...
Australian literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
.
In works of fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
, Henry Lawson's
Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...
Drover's Wife lives in a slab hut; so does his Bush Undertaker,
The Bush Undertaker
"The Bush Undertaker" is a popular short story by Australian writer and poet Henry Lawson. Along with "The Drover's Wife", "The Bush Undertaker" is one of Lawson's first sketches, and is among the stories for which he first gained attention as an accommplished writer...
and much of A Day on a Selection is set in or around one. A horizontal-slab shearing shed is the scene for Stragglers, and Lawson remarks of this makeshift structure, '... the whole business reminds us of the "cubby house" style of architecture of our childhood.'
Miles Franklin's
Miles Franklin
Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published in 1901...
Sybylla Melvyn grew up in a 'comfortable, wide-veranda'ed, irregularly built slab house' in the Timlinbilly Ranges and she was educated at 'Stringybark Hill Public... a little slab school house.' Richard Mahony hurriedly renovates his goldfields house and general store, so it will be fit for his new wife to occupy 'That her ears should not be polluted by the worst language of the customers he ran up a partition... cutting off the slab-walled portion of the house, with its roof of stringy-bark, from the log and canvas front. He also stopped with putty the worst gaps between the slabs...' Geoffrey Hamlyn recollects 'the old slab hut' at Baroona 'now quite overwhelmed' by the new, long, low house, the result of 'dull, stupid prosperity'.
Steele Rudd's
Steele Rudd
Steele Rudd was the pseudonym of Arthur Hoey Davis an Australian author, best known for On Our Selection.-Early life:...
Our New Selection describes the first house his farming family built:
It was a slabbed house, with shingledRoof shingleRoof shingles are a roof covering consisting of individual overlapping elements. These elements are typically flat rectangular shapes laid in rows from the bottom edge of the roof up, with each successive higher row overlapping the joints in the row below...
roof, and space enough for two rooms, but the partition wasn't up. The floor was earth, but Dad had a mixture of sand and fresh cow-dung with which he used to keep it level. About once every month he would put it on, and everyone had to keep outside that day till it was dry. There were no locks on the doors. Pegs were put in to keep them fast at night, and the slabs were not very close together, for we could easily see anybody coming on horseback by looking through them. Joe and I used to play at counting the stars through the cracks in the roof.
In biographical
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
writings, Louisa Anne Meredith
Louisa Anne Meredith
Louisa Anne Meredith , also known as Louisa Anne Twamley, was an Anglo/Australian writer and illustrator.-Biography:...
considered such 'habitations... the least pleasing objects one meets with in this colony,' but her objections were chiefly to the poor initial construction and subsequent neglect of those dwellings. This arose, she claimed, from the high wages paid due to the shortage of labour, and therefore the idleness and drunkenness of the 'working classes'. Writing of a convict-owned and operated theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, Ralph Rashleigh says 'The theatre.... had few external charms. It was formed only of slabs and bark; yet the interstices of the walls being filled in with mud, and the whole of the interior whitewashed with pipeclay, of which there was abundance near, it produced no despicable effect by candlelight.'Tucker, Ralph Rashleigh Chapter XII. He also describes several other slab structures, and the problems caused by use of unseasoned timber
Green wood
Green wood is a term used to describe wood products that have been recently cut and have therefore not had an opportunity to "season" by evaporation of the internal moisture. The term is used often in describing the relative moisture content of wood products such as firewood and lumber...
Rachel Henning
Rachel Henning
Rachel Henning was born in England. In 1854 she went to Australia, but returned to England in 1856 due to homesickness and the hot climate. However, in 1861, she returned to Australia where she settled permanently...
describes the construction of their slab-built homestead
Homestead (buildings)
A homestead is either a single building, or collection of buildings grouped together on a large agricultural holding, such as a ranch, station or a large agricultural operation of some other designation.-See also:* Farm house* Homestead Act...
on their Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
station
Station (Australian agriculture)
Station is the term for a large Australian landholding used for livestock production. It corresponds to the North American term ranch or South American estancia...
. The house was relocated during her time there. Henning remarks, 'It is not much to move a slab house; all the woodwork takes down and puts up again; some of the roof may have to be new, but nothing else.'
Mrs Aeneas Gunn writes of the satisfaction derived from building their slab homestead, 'beginning at the beginning of things': choosing, felling and sawing their own timber. In his A Fortunate Life
A Fortunate Life
A Fortunate Life is an autobiographical novel written by Albert Facey and was published in 1981 and tells the complete story of his life. It chronicles his early life in Western Australia, his experiences as a private during the Gallipoli campaign of World War I and his return to civilian life...
, Bert Facey describes his method of building a slab house for a farmer, having watched and helped others to build such structures several times during his life.
In New Zealand Literature
Frank Melton's Luck (1891):
I've bought that big block of land ten miles north of here. Shall want you to go up and manage it. Take up Tom Hardy with you. He'll look after the cattle and cook. Then those two contractor fellows will soon run you up a slab hut. A tent will do till it's ready.
In the Shadow of the Bush (1899):
A large clearing opened out on the right, and a little way back from the road-line stood a slab hut—or wharé, as it is generally called in New Zealand... A building of but one apartment... constructed entirely of split timber, but neatly put together. The roof was of iron, as was also the chimney. The latter, deep and wide, extended nearly across the whole of one end, and formed almost a small compartment of its own. Its dimensions, however, were but in keeping with the supply of firewood outside; and it is only in the bush districts that such fireplaces are to be seen... Two small windows gave light to the apartment.
A Maori Maid (1898):
On a low hill-side, with a clump of bush close behind, stood the rough whare. The roof was thatched with totaraPodocarpus totaraPodocarpus totara is a species of podocarp tree endemic to New Zealand. It grows throughout the North Island and northeastern South Island in lowland, montane and lower subalpine forest at elevations of up to 600 m.-Description:...
bark. The walls consisted of unplaned slabs of totara wood about six feet long, placed vertically side by side. There was no lining, and there were no flooring boards; only the hard dry clay. The window was a mere opening with a piece of white linenLinenLinen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
stretched across in place of glass... Almost the whole of one end of the hut consisted of fireplace. The chimney was built of wood. At the bottom large stones, cemented together with clay and mud, formed a rough lining and a protection from the flames... John's present country home was as rough and unpretentious as it well could be. He was pursuing the wise course of putting every available penny into improvements that would bring in some profit... Time enough to build a good homestead when he had a good woolshed...
In Australian and New Zealand Art
Augustus Earle
Augustus Earle was a London-born travel artist. Unlike earlier artists who worked outside Europe and were employed on voyages of exploration or worked abroad for wealthy, often aristocratic patrons, Earle was able to operate quite independently - able to combine his lust for travel with an...
, and S.T. Gill
S. T. Gill
S. T. Gill , also known by his signature S.T.G., was and English-born Australian artist.sheet 20.2 x 25.7 cm...
usually show one or more slab structures; Gill even illustrated the process of splitting timber for slabs. William Strutt's sketch of a settler's hut shows the tools used to build it, while John Skinner Prout
John Skinner Prout
John Skinner Prout was born in Plymouth, England, nephew of the famous English watercolourist Samuel Prout.Prout emigrated to Sydney in 1840, accompanied by his wife and their seven children, Prout hoping to pursue a career in Australia as a professional artist and printer...
's Interior of Settlers Hut Australia emphasizes the crudity of technique and bulkiness of the timbers. It also shows the timber fireplace and chimney. Strutt in 1856, also sketched a New Zealand settler's 'whorry' William Swainson, John Barr Clark Hoyte, Frances Mary Hodges and Charles Blomfield, among others, produced paintings of slab whares and other structures. Images of works by these artists are available on-line at the Alexander Turnbull Library
The deterioration of the hut depicted by Nicholas Chevalier
Nicholas Chevalier
Nicholas Chevalier was an Australian artist.-Early life:Chevalier was born in St Petersburg, Russia, the son of Louis Chevalier, who came from Vaud, Switzerland, and was overseer to the estates of the Prince de Wittgenstein in Russia. Nicholas' mother was Russian...
in his Buffalo Ranges supports Louisa Meredith's observation about poor upkeep by many hut occupants. Unk White's
Unk White
Cecil John White , known under the penname Unk White, was an Australian cartoonist born in Auckland, New Zealand.He came to Sydney in 1922 with the artists Joe and Guy Lynch and was soon immersed in the bohemian scene there....
1960s sketches of Tyrrell's Vineyard in the Hunter Valley include a slab hut dating from 1858.
The 'backblocks' humour of Australian cartoonists of the Smith's Weekly
Smith's Weekly
Smith's Weekly was an Australian tabloid newspaper published from 1919 to 1950. An independent weekly published in Sydney, but read all over Australia, Smith’s Weekly was one of Australia’s most patriotic newspaper-style magazines....
school such as Alex Gurney
Alexander George Gurney
Alexander George "Alex" Gurney was an Australian artist, caricaturist, and cartoonist born at Pasley House, Stoke, Devonport , England.-Family:...
, Percy Leason, Stan Cross
Stan Cross
Stanley George Cross was born in the United States but was known as an Australian strip and political cartoonist who drew for Smith’s Weekly and The Herald and Weekly Times...
and Eric Jolliffe
Eric Jolliffe
Eric Jolliffe was an Australian cartoonist who contributed to The Bulletin and Smith's Weekly. He was particularly fond of "bush" subjects.-Biography:...
often included slab huts as a backdrop
Theatrical scenery
Theatrical scenery is that which is used as a setting for a theatrical production. Scenery may be just about anything, from a single chair to an elaborately re-created street, no matter how large or how small, whether or not the item was custom-made or is, in fact, the genuine item, appropriated...
to their gags
Gag cartoon
A gag cartoon is most often a single-panel cartoon, usually including a hand-lettered or typeset caption beneath the drawing. A pantomime cartoon carries no caption...
. Jolliffe also published detailed sketches of slab structures still standing, to preserve Australian heritage. In journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
, illustrations of rural towns and farms in Australian newspapers and magazines of the Colonial era often show slab huts and homes. Examples can be seen in The Australasian Sketcher,See The Australasian Sketcher Nov. 1878. The slab hut depicted in this issue near Stringybark Creek was allegedly occupied by the Kelly Gang.
Ned Kelly
Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...
The Sydney Mail
The Sydney Mail
The Sydney Mail was an Australian magazine published weekly in Sydney. The weekly edition of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, it ran from 1860 to 1938....
and Sydney Punch.
A Contemporary Slab Dwelling
This slab-walled house (Fig. 1) was built in 1992, in the Watagan RangesWatagan Mountains
The Watagan Mountains are located on the East Coast of New South Wales, Australia. They are between the Hunter River Catchment and the Tuggerah Lakes. The Watagans are a popular tourist location and are close to Newcastle, Sydney and the Central Coast....
of New South Wales.
It varies from the traditional design in several respects. It is raised off the ground on stumps (Fig. 5); the slab walls are of sawn timber, not flitches split from a trunk (Fig 2.); it uses the nailed 'channel' method of holding the slabs, not mortises; the spaces between the slabs are filled with foam-rubber
Foam rubber
Foam rubber refers to rubber that has been manufactured with a foaming agent to create an air-filled matrix structure. Commercial foam rubbers are generally either polyurethane foam or natural foam rubber latex. Latex foam rubber, used in mattresses, is well-known for its endurance.-See also:*...
strips (Fig. 5); no attempt has been made to line or clad the house (Fig. 3); it has no chimney or fireplace as part of the structure; the floor is of chipboard
Particle board
Particle board, or particleboard , is an engineered wood product manufactured from wood particles, such as wood chips, sawmill shavings, or even saw dust, and a synthetic resin or other suitable binder, which is pressed and extruded...
.
More akin to traditional structures, the roof has no joist
Joist
A joist, in architecture and engineering, is one of the horizontal supporting members that run from wall to wall, wall to beam, or beam to beam to support a ceiling, roof, or floor. It may be made of wood, steel, or concrete. Typically, a beam is bigger than, and is thus distinguished from, a joist...
s, and there is no ceiling; the entire pitch of the roof forms the interior space, allowing for cooling in summer; the gable-ends
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
are framed with studs
Wall stud
A wall stud is a vertical member in the light frame construction techniques called balloon framing and platform framing of a building's wall.-Purpose:...
and filled in with weatherboards
Weatherboarding
Weatherboarding is the cladding or ‘siding’ of a house consisting of long thin timber boards that overlap one another, either vertically or horizontally on the outside of the wall. They are usually of rectangular section with parallel sides...
(Fig. 4). The walls are kept square by a mezzanine floor
Mezzanine (architecture)
In architecture, a mezzanine or entresol is an intermediate floor between main floors of a building, and therefore typically not counted among the overall floors of a building. Often, a mezzanine is low-ceilinged and projects in the form of a balcony. The term is also used for the lowest balcony in...
, reached by an internal spiral staircase, making the house in effect a two-storey
Storey
A storey or story is any level part of a building that could be used by people...
structure (Fig. 3).
External links
- A.N.U. : Colonial Slab Hut Construction
- Kell's Hut, Kosciusko National Park
- The Pioneering of South Gippsland
- Child's model, settler's hut, 1857. Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
- Early Settlers Homes and Bush Huts in Australia.
- New Zealand Heritage: Historic Booth's Cottage
- New Zealand Heritage: Historic Black Spur Slab Hut
- Cressbrook Homestead
- Gracemere Homestead