Local Materials in Early North Queensland Housing

Abstract

The variability of attitudes and reactions demonstrated by early European explorers and settlers to the new North Queensland environment leads to the conclusion that their perception of the tropics was an entirely subjective one (Sumner, 1974B). Yet when the proposed period of residence in North Queensland was sufficient to warrant the construction of a dwelling, the realities of the situation were more strongly manifested. In the absence of industries for the manufacture or processing of building materials, and with slow, infrequent and unreliable transport facilities for their import, early houses were limited to locally available building materials - the natural, the organic, or the hand-made.

It might be expected that a close relationship between environment and dwelling would thus ensue; the following account of the use of such materials for early North Queensland dwellings reveals, however, that the majority of the early settlers responded to the constraints of their new situation with some degree of adaptability, but with an even greater degree of persistence in established, and foreign, cultural and behavioural patterns.