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The hut people

17/6/2023

26 Comments

 
Picture
Shack Bay, 1970s. Photos: Frank Coldebella, unless indicated otherwise.
By Frank Coldebella

In the early 70s about 40 per cent of Australia’s 12 million population was under 20. Some teachers still used corporal punishment. Kids could be humiliated in front of the whole class or school assembly. The poor, non-Anglos and those who weren’t good at sport or academia were regularly reminded of their social inferiority. It put some students off education for life.

But American TV was starting to change the values, culture and tempo of Australia society. Kenny and Ronny ‘The Rat’ were gentle-souled refugees from a tough Melbourne where sharpie wars were still raging. They were lured to the Cape Paterson Surf Lifesaving Club by the promise of free weekend accommodation but couldn’t handle the military-style marching and drill of the club or the crash-through mentality of surf boat rowing.
So they left and set up camp in the coast ti-tree above the Channel. It was handy to toilets and taps near the boat ramp. Ronny slept in a tarp-covered hammock. He didn’t surf but swam all year round and wrote some poetry. Around the campfire Ken, Ron and others would tell us horror stories about their experiences in Melbourne and what they had heard about the Vietnam War.

The Channel camp expanded. In winter a fire was kept going to warm numb hands after a surf. The area began to look like the day after Woodstock. One Sunday morning Dave Cook, the caretaker at Cape, came with two policemen and told everyone they had to leave because the council was going to build a caravan park (now the Illawong Caravan Park).

Some of the free campers decamped to secluded banksia woodlands near Harmers Haven and Cutlers Beach. Ron, Ken, and the Kavanagh and Sherrin Bros piled their stuff into an old ute and retreated to what was then remote Shack Bay. The unmade coast road then was a narrow track – longer, windier and very rough, with deep rabbit and wombat holes.

Hidden from the road, with a view of the sun and moon rise, Shack Bay had a serenity that absorbed its inhabitants. The bay wrapped around us and egos fell away in the face of nature’s beauty. 
Picture
David Legg and Gary Alexander at ‘Trapper’ Williams’ hut
​A hut on the coast can satisfy its owner more than a mansion on a boulevard. With the sounds of wind and sea echoing off cliffs looming high over a solitary fisherman, you could see the virtue of menial tasks: remaking clothes, carving a button out of a shell, mending a tarp or fishing gear, collecting wood that had been delivered by the tide. 

​Just north of the huts, on a cleared north-east-facing slope, there was evidence of long abandoned vegetable plots probably hand-watered from the creek.
Picture'Main Street', Shack Bay
Huts on the west-facing beaches were kept a strict secret from authority and the kind of men who enjoy destruction and vandalism.  Over decades a walkway between the huts had been paved with wave-smoothed slabs carted up from the tidal zone. 

​Only the light, tide, winds or weather altered the flow of activity.  When cold south-westerly winds roared, a gentle wave broke around the point. Wisps of scented smoke rose from the tin and stone chimneys like incense, promising a welcoming place to warm hands and stare into a fire.


Swallows arrived every year to nest under the eaves.

A shell midden on the east side of the creek was evidence that it had been a bountiful and idyllic camping place for millennia.

The largest hut had been cobbled together by Percy Williams and his extended family. He lived in Garden Street and worked for the State Electricity Commission. Alert, energetic and keen eyed, with a native intuitive sense of the land, Percy had stopped using his hut, saying “It’s too busy on the coast now”, and changed his holiday camp to a creek near Licola.

Picture
David Legg and Ron McLaren at Percy Williams' hut.
The Sherrin brothers renovated Percy’s hut. They replaced the floorboards with a patchwork of leftover timber and made extra bunks for visitors. By the time they finished it was as good as many of the houses in town and none had better surrounds.  

Ken would arrive at Shack Bay in his Kombi van on Friday night, after working in the city as a typesetter at The Age. If he had some spare space left in the classifieds he could slip in a free ad for you. He stayed in the smallest hut, which had been built by George Kiely. It was the standard single bloke’s hut. One room, green tin walls and a red roof. A single bed the length of the south wall doubled as a couch. Opposite was a small open fire with tin chimney, one chair, one fruit box, and a shelf table below the only window which faced the bay.

On a Saturday morning Ken would do shopping for Ethel and anybody else who didn’t want to deal with crowds and commerce, then head back to this free space ready to be filled with serendipitous random wandering, wondering and imagining.

Huts were held more in custodianship than ownership. Most weren’t locked so anybody could stay if a bunk was vacant.
​
One hut visitor was an anxious looking young man from NSW who was “hitching west”, possibly one of the thousands of draft dodgers on the track for anonymity. How did he know the huts existed? Did the local miners still have union connections in NSW?    
​
​
*****
During the Depression, Wonthaggi’s unemployment rate had passed 20 per cent. Single men living at home could not get the dole. Rather than tramp long distances in shabby clothes for non- existent work, some headed for the beach and bush, which offered freedom from insults and a change of diet. ​
Picture
George Kiely's hut
These were days of real poverty, when families camped all year in flimsy shelters, and possum bones were well sucked.  Poverty forces people to stretch their brains. They might not have much book learning but they could see and process things among themselves. Shelters were built with whatever was available. Sometimes it seemed sensible to steal materials that were not realising their full potential.

Periodic strikes gave miners respite from the gas, dust and fumes of the coal face and a chance to regain their health at the beach. An old bloke said: “Ya know, I never once in my life voted to go back to work. It was just the way things were going for me.”

During the Depression and miners’ strikes, families shared a boat and net at Shack Bay. The primal adventure and excitement of food gathering helped to make the deprivation bearable. ​An old bloke told me: “In those days we shared a house cow, chooks, gardens, rabbit traps, hand lines, occasional kangaroo, wombat, ducks and fish. There wasn’t really a lot left to buy.”
Picture
Shack Bay, c. 1930s. Photographer unknown
There was a connectivity in these small camps where no one took credit for the accomplishments of the village. Things just happened. They could live in frugal sufficiency with the seasonal bounty. The lessons of two depressions together with intuition and imagination enabled them to endure fasting and cold and to get by on practically nothing, knowing there would always be others worse off. Friends and relations tended to live nearby, giving sufficient reason for gratitude for a balanced life.

Lila Williams told me: “It wasn’t easy feeding kids in the old days. The fish didn’t always bite. We ate a tremendous lot of rabbits.” She also grew climbing beans which earned her an instant rapport and friendship with the neighbouring Italians in the crescents of South Wonthaggi.

The coast dwellers were kind to the newly arrived migrants who also had experiences of depravation and hunger. They shared the belief that wasting food was a sin. An Italian day visitor exchanged a bag of onions for a bag of fish. Long after the Depression was over, and the home comforts arrived, they never lost the attitude towards precious resources. Feathers were kept for mattresses and pillows.

Most of the coast hut builders came from South Wonthaggi, where on a still night you could hear the sea murmuring its various moods and tunes. When the September school holidays came, the smell of the sea and the coastal flowers became an irresistible siren call. They held the beach as an aesthetic sensibility beyond religions.

Even after cars became common, some of the old people preferred to walk to the beach. The track to Shack Bay started at the corner of Carneys Road, crossed paddocks, wound through woodlands and skirted wetlands. This slow pilgrimage was part of the ritual, allowing the mind to leave behind the town’s clamour. The thin line of blue sea coming into view was a moment of pure joy.

A childhood place can be the custodian of your early memories. An old bloke with nice clothes turned up to revisit his childhood: times of 20 per cent unemployment and selling rabbit skins to feed the family.
​​
*****
By the early `70s Ethel Brown and Norm Perry were the regulars I saw at the huts. Norm was the plumber at Coldon Homes when I started working there in early 1972. He had inherited his hut when his father was killed in the mine explosion of 1937. The hut was the first on the east side of the creek.

Like other coast dwellers, Norm was a good bushman and camper with strong bronzed hands. Over decades the life of the coast had soaked into him. He never tied up his shoelaces, maybe from all the time spent in bare feet. He was weathered, earthy, steadfast and stoical. Ask him about his experience of the Depression and he answered “We got by”.

He drove an old Vanguard ute and shared an old boat with some mates. He only fished between Flat Rocks and Cape Paterson and only ever used a number four fishhook. Careful observing and listening in nature was his life vocation. He kept detailed records of all his fishing in a battered book. Ron Gilmour, a neighbour from his Broome Crescent days, said “Norm could not swim a stroke”.  ​
Ethel Brown was the understanding matriarch of the huts. The spirit of the beach and surrounding bush had soaked into her from early childhood, nurturing her during the hard and hungry times.  Like many of her generation who experienced real poverty, her face told of strain and perseverance. Being poor wasn’t the problem; it was being disrespected by those who were better off.          
​
With help from friends, she ignored authorities and lived a peaceful life at Shack Bay. The window of her hut looked across the bay. It had a string of cowrie shells draped across it. 

With basic needs met, and connected to her place, her desires were focused solely on the wellbeing of grandchildren and those worse off than her. She reminded me of Ma Joad in the novel Grapes of Wrath. “If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.”

My last memory of Ethel was a late Sunday afternoon. As the fading winter sunlight moved up the cliff, Ethel was standing on the edge of the rock platform closest to where Kenny was waiting for that one last wave before going back to the city.  Ethel yelled, as many mothers of her generation were used to doing, “KENNYYYYY…..  YA TEEEEAAAAA’S READYYYYY!!!!”

In the mid `70s the Lands Department put a notice on all the huts stating that if the owners could not produce a current lease they would be demolished.

Like a coast plant clinging to a cliff, with nowhere else to go, Ethel held on to her humble home for as long as she could. Her eviction was traumatic for the whole family. After much anxiety she moved to South Dudley. It might as well have been another country. Like any native with deep roots she did not transplant well. She died in a car accident not long after.   
*****
All the huts and people passed on to me a way of being in the world that appreciated good and beautiful things that didn’t cost anything. I admired their authenticity and aversion to conspicuous wealth.  Their simple, frugal lives made them legends of respectability and their generation gave us perspective.     

It filled a deep need for me at the time. Arriving at a coastal hut, a school uniform could be rolled up and put out of mind. Like some baptism, the sea cleared the nose, unclenched the brain and restored clarity. Time stretched; thoughts, movements and actions flowed naturally and the boundary between self and the natural world disappeared.

When the wind and sea stop, the deep stillness can be an almost spiritual experience. There were moments of unconscious splendour in the things we did, immersed and absorbed in the light, colour, sound and smell. Watching an eagle or seabird in effortless motion, the jewel flash of a bird through banksias, aimlessly wandering on rock platforms, cliffs and bush hinterland in all directions. We followed the creek inland to what was then a vast manna gum woodland, home to koalas and goannas.

We challenged the elements, took shortcuts up cliffs, tobogganed down the steep grassy hill on sheets of iron. Everything was possible and we felt indestructible. There were moments of wordless communication and understanding between close friends. Events manifested that later left us wondering if they had happened especially for us.

Leaving the huts on Sunday evening and returning to “civilisation” was a solemn process. I would get home late and exhausted, but feeling healed and ready for another round with the modern world.

Those carefree, dreamtime days with the hut people are rich in my memory. 
​
Dedicated to the hut dwellers of South Wonthaggi: Ted Mason, Norm Legge, Percy Williams, Ethel Brown, Jim Bell, Jean Colbert, Calder Brothers, Norm Perry, Jim Longstaff, Trapper Williams, ‘Nig Undy’, Eddy Harmer, Tom Bawden and their mates and clans. 
​
Picture
The coast dwellers
August 27, 2016 - Jim McDonnell was still living in a hut on the coast between Harmers and Cape in the mid-1970s. Frank Coldebella recalls a man attuned to the natural rhythms of life.

26 Comments
Catherine Watson
18/6/2023 07:13:14 pm

Jim Bell was my neighbour. His English mother in law had a brother in the US. Distance gave licence for exaggeration in the days before mass air travel. But finally in the 70s the old uncle came to visit. Here's Jim's account:
One day he said to me, “Where did my sisters have their holiday homes?”
“What!” I said. “Holiday homes?”
He said, “Their holiday homes – where they had such marvellous holidays. They used to write and tell me about it.”
I took him out the back and showed him the chook shed. “That’s a bloody sight better than their holiday homes. Their holiday homes were just old shacks illegally built in the sandhills – they had dirt floors and slept in hammocks.”
I said, “I can’t show you their holiday homes because they’ve all been knocked down. But I can show you where they had them.” So I took him to The Oaks, where the three families used to have their huts.
“Jim,” he said, “I think I might have been told the odd furphy. I think perhaps my sisters didn’t do quite as well for themselves as I’d been led to believe.”
I suppose when you think you’re never going to see someone again you can tell them any bloody thing.
“Their huts weren’t much,” I said, “but they could wander down to the beach and catch three or four crayfish – I think you call them lobsters in America – and boil them up over the fire. They’d set traps and catch rabbits. They could guarantee to catch a feed of fish for tea. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they lived like kings.”

Reply
Dr. Lynda Hanlon
24/6/2023 12:06:04 pm

I remember a similar place from my early teenage years - perhaps it is the same place - called Tin Shack Bay. It was secluded, rustic, and wonderful.

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MARIAN QUIGLEY
19/6/2023 10:02:57 am

What a wonderful story!

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Joy Button
19/6/2023 10:08:42 am

Loved every bit of this story. Thank you Frank.

Reply
Connie Sheen
19/6/2023 12:50:58 pm

A wonderfully written piece. Thank you!

Reply
Andrea Lemon
19/6/2023 09:56:53 pm

I loved reading this. I first visited shack bay in the early 80s and already the shacks were just stories. Whenever I visit that beach I walk in the bush behind and try to imagine what it must have been. Your story and the images are so evocative. Thankyou

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Sue Brown
20/6/2023 09:07:29 pm

Lovely story about shackbay my Mother was Ethel Brown .

Reply
Leroy Bickerton
22/6/2023 01:51:10 am

My mum's grandparents lived there in the shacks too before Ethel brown was in there ... My mum's is Mary was beckerleg

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Michelle Brown
20/6/2023 09:31:56 pm

Thank you frank i loved reading your story my grandmother was Ethel Brown i have very fond memories of the huts at shack bay & of my grandmother.
Growing up i loved hearing the stories my nan, aunties & my mum would tell of growing up at the huts i spent most of my childhood at the huts.
My family never really referred shack bay as shack bay to us it was the huts nut we all have our stories & memories of shack bay/the huts.

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Sally McNiece
21/6/2023 07:44:11 am

Frank! What a fabulous reflection; thank you so much for sharing your story and history.
I often day dream at shack bay of those that came before me, including those who lived in the shacks that gave it its name. It will be wonderful to take this story with me next time I’m there.

Reply
Glenys Dempsey
21/6/2023 05:38:28 pm

Thank you for this wonderful story. Bought back many great memories.

Reply
Joan Wright nee Loughran
22/6/2023 10:30:33 am

My grandparents (Pop and Nanny Nichols and uncle Tas) had a shack there, used to love Christmas School holidays spent there, great story.

Reply
Annie Chisholm
22/6/2023 10:51:34 pm

Great story, Frank - thanks!!

Reply
Dale Chapman
23/6/2023 06:28:23 pm

A Great story of a wonderful era, and a important piece in my jigsaw memory

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Regina Dudek
24/6/2023 09:23:21 am

Thank you for sharing this wonderful story.
Your knack for bringing a unique aspect of this beautiful part of the world alive is amazing.
Keep telling your stories.

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Deb Le Cerf
24/6/2023 02:37:51 pm

Hi Frank,
What a beautifully written, evocative account of the dwellers at beautiful Shack Bay. I came here late 70s, heard the stories & loved to imagine what life must have been like for them all whenever I walked & swam there. Do you know what year they were finally all demolished? Also fond memories of the Oaks.
Please write more of these heartwarming historical recollections Frank, they are treasures.

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Felicia Di Stefano
24/6/2023 02:57:47 pm

Much gratitude from me as well, Frank. I remember an elderly lady telling me stories of her family that used to live in a shack by the beach and the wonderful times they had there. You have made her stories live for me. You need to write a book.

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Linda Cuttriss
25/6/2023 10:15:23 am

Another priceless gem. Thanks Frank!

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Jeff Cole
25/6/2023 12:48:22 pm

"In the mid `70s the Lands Department put a notice on all the huts stating that if the owners could not produce a current lease they would be demolished."
Official Vandalism does at least as much harm as the casual sort, maybe more.

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Sandra Dennis
28/6/2023 05:07:22 pm

Thank you so much we had a hut between our Uncle George(Kiely) and Percy and Rose Williams So many memories ...the one I remember most ? Going to sleep at night with waves crashing on the shore I love that sound still I can hear it in my mind and the endless days that brought joy to us kids

Reply
Kim Nicolin(Armstrong)
2/7/2023 09:19:51 pm

Great story thank you . This brings back so many memories of the holidays we spent at “The “Huts” Ethel Brown was a cousin .

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Terri BURNS
3/7/2023 11:13:12 pm

Great story thank you Frank.You certainly painted a vivid picture of life at "Shack bay" Lots of locals had the pleasure of visiting their friends and famileies there and catching a few crays. My pop (Jonah Makin) often told of his times out at Shack Bay and Cutlers Rocks.fishing and catching a few crays They were cooked up in Kerosene tins.. He walked to those places until he got a push bike had no car in those days...

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Daryl Kew
5/7/2023 05:24:24 pm

Brought back many memories, Dawn my wife and I spent every weekend at Ethel’s during the early mid seventies she was like mum to us that we never forgot

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Roy E whatmough link
21/9/2024 11:23:26 am

Don't know if you will see this Daryl you some of a gun, I read the article about ethyl and the shacks, what memories, liife for me has been up and down, living with son now, Linda passed away five years ago, I have not heard from Mick or Laurie for long time, if you get in touch I will give you my phone number - cheers mate ( Inverloch was one heck of a ride )

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Stacy Bradshaw
11/9/2024 05:03:57 pm

My pop is Henry Williams. His dad was Percy Williams.

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Meryl & Hartley Tobin link
19/9/2024 06:37:04 pm

A beautifully-written evocative piece of social history, Frank. Thank you for preserving it for posterity. I am belatedly writing a comment after reading your piece for some research into Wonthaggi's history I am doing.

Reply



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