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House elevation and the British military settlement of Port Essington in Northern Australia

Les habitations surélevées dans la colonie militaire britannique de Port Essington dans le Nord de l'Australie
Cathy Keys

Résumés

Les théories existantes sur les origines de l’apparition de la maison tropicale en Australie mettent l’accent sur les facteurs climatiques et des précédents en Europe, au travers de récits évoluant entre maladies, manque de confort, sous-développement, et divers fléaux. C’est ainsi que des théories bien établies associent la surélévation des habitations dans le nord de l'Australie à la présence de termites, et à l'action de George Earl dans la colonie militaire britannique de Port Essington. Cet article met à contribution les archives ethnographiques et anthropologiques pour introduire la diversité dans l’histoire architecturale des maisons surélevées de Port Essington. En effet, ces bâtiments peuvent être remis dans le contexte d'habitats surélevés pré-existants dans les communautés aborigènes et insulaires du détroit de Torres, des Macassans, et des archipels d’Indonésie et du Nord.

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The elevated house and Port Essington in existing architectural histories

  • 1 J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History, Melbourne: Cheshire, 1968, p. 209.

1In the search to define an Australian tropical vernacular architecture, there has been ongoing interest in the elevated, timber-framed house. It has been understood as a technical response to climate, a vernacular architecture wrought from a demanding pioneering past (fig. 1).1

Figure 1: Queensland House, Red Hill, Brisbane, ca.1920.

Figure 1: Queensland House, Red Hill, Brisbane, ca.1920.

Source: Brisbane (Australia), State Library of Queensland, John Oxley Library, Negative number: 159519. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/​10462/​deriv/​110589. Accessed 18 January 2018.

  • 2 Andrew L. Jenner, The Building of the Queensland House 1880-1920: A Carpenters Handbook and Owner' (...)
  • 3 Peter Bell, A History of the Queensland House, Research Report, Adelaide: Historical Research Pty (...)
  • 4 Robin Boyd, Australia’s Home: Its Origins, Builders and Occupiers, Carlton: Melbourne University P (...)
  • 5 J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia, op. cit. (note 1), p. 207; Philip Cox, J. M. Freeland a (...)

2This housing type is found in the northeastern Australian state of Queensland, where domestic timber dwellings were elevated up to a story above the ground on hardwood timber posts.2 Framed and clad in local timbers, these simple house plans had all living spaces surrounded by verandahs, beneath a pyramid-shaped iron clad roof. The practice of raising houses up on hardwood posts began in a concentrated way during the late 1860s and early 1870s along the Pioneer, Burdekin, and Herbert rivers. By the Second World War, stylistic variations of this form had become the primary house type built throughout Queensland.3 Architectural historians have considered this vernacular architecture and made links with international precedent to explain its architectural uniqueness.4 An ongoing line of inquiry has been concerned with why these buildings were elevated. Scholarly interest in the precedents of housing elevation has repeatedly drawn attention to the British military outpost of Victoria, established 1838-1849 at Port Essington, on the Cobourg Peninsula of far northern Australia. This is thought to be the location of the first elevated dwellings in Australia (fig. 2).5

Figure 2: Map of Australia showing location of Port Essington.

Figure 2: Map of Australia showing location of Port Essington.

Source: drawn by Linda Thomson. Brisbane (Australia), Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, April 2016.

Port Essington

  • 6 Jim Allen, “The Archaeology of Nineteenth-Century British Imperialism: An Australian Case Study,” (...)
  • 7 Jim Allen, “The Archaeology of Nineteenth-Century British Imperialism,” op. cit. (note 6), p. 48.

3The settlement of “Victoria” was established at Port Essington in late 1838 when the Royal Navy officer Sir James John Gordon Bremer was selected to lead an expedition to Northern Australia accompanied by a chief advocate for the settlement, George Samuel Windsor Earl. The ships docked in Sydney and took on prefabricated timber frames for seven buildings. These included a dwelling for the commandant—or Government House; a dwelling for the officers; a barracks room; a kitchen; a hospital, a store house; and a church.6 On November 3, 1838, the site of Victoria was selected. It was 24 kilometers (15 miles) from open sea, on a landlocked, low-lying inner harbor to meet the higher priority of building a defendable naval base. The name Victoria never really stuck, and throughout the historical record and in this paper, Port Essington is used instead. The site was cleared of trees and vegetation through felling and burning. In the next six months, a pier, a hospital, and officers' quarters were completed, with progress made on two separate gun and magazine batteries which were placed on prominent headlands facing out to the harbor. Twenty-four single men’s huts were also completed, using walls of reed, bark, and thatch, and five cottages were built for married officers and their children (fig. 3).7

Figure 3: English settlement at Port Essington, c.1840.

Figure 3: English settlement at Port Essington, c.1840.

Source: Ernest August Goupil, lithograph by Emile Lassalle, plate 119 of: Jules Dumont d'Urville, Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans l'Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée exécuté par l’ordre du Roi 1837-1838-1839-1840. Atlas pittoresque, tome second, Paris: Gide et Cie éditeurs, 1846.

  • 8 Cathy Keys, “Diversifying the early history of the prefabricated colonial house in Moreton Bay,” Q (...)
  • 9 Jim Allen, Port Essington: The Historical Archaeology of a North Australian Nineteenth-Century Mil (...)

4Learning from the use of prefabricated-framed housing utilized in earlier military settlements nearby, at Fort Dundas (1824-1829) and Fort Wellington (1827-1829), all seven prefabricated buildings were elevated above the ground.8 Colonial records do not stipulate that the prefabricated frames be elevated, but drawings and descriptions of life in Port Essington indicate that Government House and the ordnance store were set on dwarf piles a few feet off the ground. However, following a cyclone and associated storm surge in 1840, all other prefabricated buildings were raised up off the ground some up to 2.43 meters (eight feet) high on wooden piles (fig. 4).9

Figure 4: Elevated Officers Quarters (left rear), Port Essington after cyclone, “Ruins of the Church Victoria,” December 25, 1844.

Figure 4: Elevated Officers Quarters (left rear), Port Essington after cyclone, “Ruins of the Church Victoria,” December 25, 1844.

Source: Pencil sketch by Owen Stanley, Volume 1: Voyage of H.M.S. Britomart from 1837 to 1843. Australia (Sydney), State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library.

Disease and Discomfort

5In the absence of notes from a colonial “master-architect,” existing architectural histories have focused on the writings of the Port Essington linguist, George Samuel Windsor Earl. He has been linked to the dominant theory that houses were elevated to avoid damage from wood-eating termites. Recurring themes have underpinned theories as to why dwellings were elevated in Queensland including protection from termites, health protection against tropical “miasma,” and increased storage space. All existing theories stress climatic and material drivers, and are introduced briefly below.

  • 10 J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia, op. cit. (note 1), p. 118.
  • 11 Peter Newell, “The Origins and Development of the Single Family House in Queensland,” Research Rep (...)
  • 12 Donald Watson, “The Queensland House,” op. cit. (note 4), p. 7.4.
  • 13 Balwant Singh Sini, The Australian House: Homes of the Tropical North, Sydney, New York, NY: Lansd (...)
  • 14 Donald Watson, “The Queensland House,” op. cit. (note 4), p. 7.4-7.5.
  • 15 Peter Bell, Timber and Iron, op. cit. (note 3), p. 95-97.

6Termite prevention has perhaps been the most common theory posited for early vernacular dwelling elevation in the Australian tropics. The idea of lifting buildings on hardwood posts as a means of limiting access by termites (white ants) and its link to Port Essington was first reported in architectural histories of Australia by J.M. Freeland in his book Architecture in Australia: A History (1968). Freeland stated, “This method of coping with the white ant had been accidentally discovered as early as 1839 when four of the prefabricated buildings taken to the new settlement at Port Essington were erected on eight feet high piles.”10 In 1974, architectural historians Peter Newell and Ray Sumner again raised the termite inspection theory and its Port Essington connection.11 However, in 1981, architectural historian Don Watson suggested that the need for storage pre-empted a response to termite activity.12 In 1984, Bal Saini also discussed the rational for lifting houses up above “mosquitoes, snakes and cane toads.”13 Peter Bell in Timber and Iron: Houses in North Queensland Mining Settlements, 1861-1920 (1984) argued that house elevation was not unique to Queensland, noting the practice across Southeast Asia and Europe. But he did tentatively offer two possible origins “which may have had a direct influence on the construction of high set houses in North Queensland.” These were on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and Louisiana, and elevated housing at Port Essington. Bell built on the theory posed by Don Watson earlier,14 suggesting that the “likely originator of the idea was George Windsor Earl.”15

7Bell tentatively introduces an even closer regional focus, noting “[e]levation of buildings is by no means unique to Queensland; it occurred in several other parts of the world, notably in Melanesia, Indonesia, and mainland South-East Asia.” He does not go on to elaborate on the possible influences of house elevation in Southeast Asia, instead restating and critiquing a link to buildings elevated at Port Essington. But, when he expands upon Earl’s background:

  • 16 Ibid., p. 96.

Earl was familiar with the East Indies, and his accounts of his travels contain passing references to the Malay practice of high set house construction […] However, there is difficulty in establishing any causal link between these buildings and later practice in Australia, and in its absence it would be unwise to attribute much significance to the Port Essington precedent.16

  • 17 John Archer, Building a Nation: A History of the Australian House, Sydney: William Collins, 1987, (...)
  • 18 Miles Lewis, “Off the Ground,” op. cit. (note 5), p. 33.

8John Archer, in Building a Nation: A History of the Australian House (1987), remained silent on miasma as a possible motivation for house elevation. He restates the termite theory and makes a link to Southeast Asian architecture: “the first recorded instance of high stumps on houses in Australia was at Port Essington.” Archer then states that Earl “had observed the high set houses of the Malay in the East Indies. These are traditionally built with wooden stumps which are easily replaceable, a quality which also proved effective at Port Essington.”17 In 1997, Miles Lewis stated the storage and miasma theories, refuting the idea that the dwellings were elevated to prevent termite damage. He widened Bell’s connection to stump use in Southeast Asian architecture to tropical areas all over the world.18

  • 19 Donald Charles Roderick, The Origins of the Elevated Queensland House, op. cit. (note 6), p. 179-1 (...)

9Donald Roderick (2004) prioritized a narrative of disease. He highlighted Port Essington and the Earl’s role, focusing on miasma rather than termites as motivators for elevating buildings. Exploring the Southeast Asian connection and the miasma theory, Roderick argued that British military and government officials settling the colonial frontiers of Australia imported healthy design principles developed over many years of colonial settlement in tropical regions of India, Asia, Africa, and the West Indies. He suggested that the elevation of four Port Essington buildings on piles eight feet or 2.4 meters above the ground was likely done on the advice of Governor Phillips and Chief Engineer Captain Barney. Based in Sydney, both men were Royal Engineers, but had served in the West Indies where the British had been elevating buildings eight feet above ground to improve the circulation of tropical air. Roderick noted the tropical experience of Earl and his likely awareness of the advantages of building up of the ground to avoid the “miasma”–a belief that vapors rising from stagnant water or damp ground contributed to ill health.19

  • 20 David Bridgman, “The Anglo-Asian Bungalow: Housing the Commonwealth Officer in the Northern Tropic (...)
  • 21 Ian Evans and The National Trust of Queensland, The Queensland House, op. cit. (note 4), p. 28.

10Finally, David Bridgman’s doctoral research (2006)20 summarized all these drivers and, drawing on Ian Evans’s earlier work (2001), discussed the idea of lifting houses to avoid mosquitoes and sand flies. Bridgman also cited the recommendation by architect Richard Suter (1827-1894) that hospitals be elevated to allow for airflow and inspection around posts.21 While not mutually exclusive, the existing historiography has prioritized international architectural precedent in seeking to understand the diffusion and adaptation of European civilization to an “unknown” tropical Antipodean context.

  • 22 Russell Jones, “George Windsor Earl and ‘Indonesia’,” Indonesia Circle, vol. 22, no. 64, 1994, p. (...)
  • 23 Bob Reece, “The Australasian Career of George Windsor Earl,” Journal of Northern Territory History(...)
  • 24 George Windsor Earl, The Eastern Seas, or, Voyages and Adventures in the Indian Archipelago in 183 (...)
  • 25 George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, London: Madden and Malcolm, 1846, p. 93-98.

11Regardless of the theory argued, the authors all cite the examples in Port Essington and George Windsor Earl. His name has been deeply entwined in the research since the 1970s. In the absence of a colonial architect, George Windsor Earl (1813-1865), with his interests in navigation, law, agriculture, geography, and ethnography, stood out as a “Renaissance man.”22 He was well educated and travelled, moving from England to India with the East India Company between the ages of 14 and 16 before immigrating to the Swan River Colony in Western Australia. After joining a British ship and travelling to Batavia, he visited Trengganu (Malaya), Siam, and ports in Java. By 21 years of age, Earl had been in command of a Singapore-based ship on a trading voyage to Chinese gold mining settlements in Borneo (including the Chinese port of Singkawang), returning to London in 1835 at the age of 22. He had gained all of this experience prior to his employment as a linguist and draftsman in the Port Essington arrival party of 1838.23 Earl was a scholar and prolific writer who described the favorable living conditions of buildings built by the “natives” of the islands of Java and Borneo elevated on “posts” and “piles” and constructed to “admit a free circulation of air.”24 In later life, Earl wrote about healthy settlement planning and avoidance of miasma in the context of the northern Australian climate.25 However it is difficult to find evidence of Earl’s influence on house elevation at Port Essington.

  • 26 Donald Charles Roderick, The Orgins of the Elevated Queensland House, op. cit. (note 6), p. 36, 37

12Ongoing interest in Earl’s role in the elevation of buildings at Port Essington is linked to Earl’s preference for a site for Victoria located on the outer harbor in Bowen Straits on the grounds of perceived health benefits associated with sea breezes. In his book focused on his experiences at Port Essington, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, published in 1846, Earl describes the importance of tropical settlement with good breezes and away from land-locked sites:26

  • 27 George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, op. cit. (note 25), p. 94, 96.

In taking under review the circumstances of the various settlements in these seas, it would appear that the most salubrious spots are those situated upon narrow straits. The banks of navigable rivers, above the reach of salt-water, hold the next rank. Open bays are by no means to be recommended; but land-locked harbours appear to be perfect repositories for all that can be injurious to the constitution […] But to return to the Cobourg Peninsula. Our experience with regard to the climate generally accords pretty closely with the view given above as applicable to countries in the Eastern seas. There is one point, however, which presents some difficulty, namely, the comparative salubrity of the settlement during the early period of occupation. It is possible that the hurricane, which agitated the waters of the harbour to a great degree, and broke the surface of the mud-banks and mangrove-swamps, may have tended to dissipate the maleria for a time.27

  • 28 For a full list of Earl’s publications, see Appendix 3 of R. H. W. Reece, “Introduction” in George (...)
  • 29 Dora Howard, “English Activities on the North Coast of Australia during the First Half of the Nine (...)
  • 30 George Windsor Earl , Enterprise in Tropical Australia, op. cit. (note 25), p. 47; Idem, “George W (...)
  • 31 George Windsor Earl, “George Windsor Earl to Captain Francis Beaufort, Hydrographic Office, London (...)
  • 32 R. H. W. Reece, “Introduction,” op. cit. (note 29), p. 7.

13However, despite the availability of extensive writings by28 and on Earl,29 and his time at Port Essington, there is no documented evidence to suggest he had any real influence on the elevation of buildings in the settlement. Within days of the settlement party arriving at Port Essington on October 27, 1838, and prior to selection of the site of Victoria, Earl was dispatched to Portuguese Timor. He was absent from the settlement for almost all of the time of its earliest planning and establishment, when the key elevated buildings were constructed (from November 1 to December 15, 1838).30 Soon after his return, he departed for a second trip to Timor (February 13-March 11, 1839).31 Over the length of the settlement's existence, Earl spent only half of his time there. The other half was spent traveling between London, Australia, and Southeast Asia.32 That is not to say that Earl did not influence those who were responsible for elevating buildings in the settlement under the supervision of the Captain Sir Gordon Bremer and Captain John McArthur. It is just that the record has yet to reveal this link (fig. 5).

Figure 5: English settlement at Port Essington, c. 1840.

Figure 5: English settlement at Port Essington, c. 1840.

Source: Louis LeBreton, lithograph by Sabatier, plate 120 of: Jules Dumont d'Urville, Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans l'Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée exécuté par l’ordre du Roi 1837-1838-1839-1840. Atlas pittoresque, tome second, Paris: Gide et Cie éditeurs, 1846.

14In the absence of any firm physical evidence, the quest to understand the origins of house elevation at Port Essington has focused on climatic, material, and technical conditions. Missing from this context and existing architectural histories concerned with Port Essington has been any engagement with existing elevated Aboriginal architectures found along the coastline of tropical Australia from the Cobourg Peninsula right through to the northeastern coast of Queensland, despite text and drawings from the period documenting their presence.

Indigenous Australian vernacular elevated architectures – Aboriginal platform architectures

  • 33 John Lort Stokes, Discoveries in Australia: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and (...)
  • 34 Philip Parker King, Narrative of a Survey of the Inter-Tropical and Western Coasts of Australia: P (...)

15Early European explorers observed diverse types of architectural forms built by Aboriginal people in Northern Australia33 including platform structures supported on posts.34 Stringybark vaulted platforms were recorded by explorer Ludwig Leichhardt in Cape York near the Lynd and Mitchell Rivers as early as 1847:

  • 35 Ludwig Leichhardt, Journal of an Overland Expedition, op. cit. (note 34), p. 290.

We saw a very interesting camping place of the natives, containing several two storied gunyas [Aboriginal domestic architecture], which were constructed in the following manner: four large forked sticks were rammed into the ground, supporting cross poles placed in their forks, over which bark was spread sufficiently strong and spacious for a man to lie upon; other sheets of stringy-bark were bent over the platform, and formed an arched roof, which kept out any wet.35

16Two housing types were recorded by anthropologists A. Wilkin and A.C Haddon in the Torres Straits in late 1880s. One was created on the ground.

  • 36 A. Wilkin and Alfred C. Haddon, “Houses” in Alfred Haddon (ed.), Reports of the Cambridge Anthropo (...)

The other type consisted of a sleeping platform raised two or three feet above the ground and supported on forked poles. Around and above this was erected a roof with a ridge pole supported by two vertical poles, lateral vertical poles supported the sides of the roof, which consisted of several longitudinal bars or purlins lashed to the rafters; the whole was covered in tree-bark.36

  • 37 Edward Palmer, Early Days in North Queensland, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1903, p. 212-213.
  • 38 Walter Edmund Roth, “Bulletin No 16. Huts and Shelters,” in K. F. Macintyre (ed.), The Queensland (...)

17A description of Aboriginal platform shelters was recorded by northern Queensland settler Edward Palmer in the late 1800s.37 Physician and ethnographer Walter Edmund Roth was the first protector of Aboriginal people in Queensland. His 1910 publication Huts and Shelters included illustrated drawings of eleven unique forms of Aboriginal architecture, and a detailed description of platform housing.38

  • 39 Donald Thomson, “The Seasonal Factor in Human Culture. Illustrated from the Life of a Contemporary (...)

18The arrival of European settlers did not put an end to the Aboriginal practice of seeking refuge by living in elevated housing in the mosquito-, crocodile-, and snake-infested environments of Northern Australia. Anthropologist Donald Thompson documented a diverse range of Aboriginal architectures in the region in the 1930s, including raised sleeping platforms which were used for extended periods during the wet season.39 Thomson provided a line drawing of the dwelling type which was accompanied by the following caption:

  • 40 Ibid. (note 39), p. 218-219.

Large wet season house (waintjin) with roof and sides covered by long strips of the bark of the Stringybark (Eucalyptus tetradonta: pek’lpont) and sleeping platform within. Used chiefly in savannah forest during ark karp (wet season) for protection against rain and mosquitoes.40

  • 41 Shaneen Fantin, “Housing Aboriginal Culture in North-East Arnhem Land,” Ph.D. dissertation, St Luc (...)
  • 42 Paul Memmott and Shaneen Fantin, “The Study of Indigenous Ethno-Architecture in Australia,” in Bru (...)

19Thomson lived with different groups of Yolngu people in Arnhem Land.41 He recorded thirteen distinct Aboriginal architectural types in Arnhem Land, three of which had elevated living platforms.42 As he had found in Cape York, Aboriginal people living in Arnhem Land built roofed platform houses for longer-term occupation during the wet season.

  • 43 Donald Thomson, Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land, Melbourne: Ma (...)

During the wet season, the river courses rise quickly and soon overflow their banks so that the country is flooded for miles. The grass, especially in the plains, grows rank and high—often more than six feet—and the people are concentrated in semi-permanent wet season camps in which the population may exceed one hundred. Here they lead an almost sedentary existence in contrast with their active nomadic life in the south-east season. At this time they construct houses, sometimes of large size—thatched with the bark of tea-tree (Melaleuca) or of stringybark (Eucalyptus tetrodonta). Some of these houses are well built and are provided with sleeping platforms under which fires can be lighted as protection from mosquitoes. They are also equipped with racks to carry food and utensils. Each house types has its traditional form, type of construction and distinctive name, and is often developed in adaption to a particular environment, or as determined by the building materials available in the vicinity.43

  • 44 William Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization – A social study of an Australian tribe, Chicago, IL: H (...)
  • 45 Ibid. (note 44), p. 473-5.
  • 46 William Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe. Revised edition (...)
  • 47 R. M. Berndt, Kunapipi, New York, NY: International University Press, 1951; William Lloyd Warner , (...)
  • 48 Joseph Reser, “Values in Bark: Traditional Aboriginal Dwellings,” Hemisphere, vol. 22, no. 10, Oct (...)

20Anthropologist William Lloyd Warner, working in Arnhem Land in the 1930s, also recorded the use of a wet weather house raised on poles, which he called a “pile house” or “mosquito house” in the area of the Goyder and Glyde Rivers.44 First published in 1937, his book A Black CivilizationA social study of an Australian tribe, provided details about these elevated platform dwellings.45 However, Warner removed this description from the 1969 edition.46 This range of dwelling types and the construction of raised platform houses persisted long after contact with European settlers. Researchers working in Arnhem Land noted that Aboriginal people in the area attached symbolic and sacred meaning to all architectural elements of the traditional bark house, including the forked post supporting the structure and the raised platform.47 During ethnographic field work in Arnhem Land between 1975 and 1976, environmental psychologist Joseph Reser photographed and described wet weather houses with two—sometimes threestories of platforms under a single roof (fig. 6).48

Figure 6: Aboriginal elevated living environments, Arnhem Land, c. 1981.

Figure 6: Aboriginal elevated living environments, Arnhem Land, c. 1981.

Source: Photograph provided by Joe Reser from his personal collection.

  • 49 Paul Memmott, “The Way It Was: Customary Camps and Houses in the Southern Gulf of Carpentaria,” in (...)
  • 50 Paul Memmott and Shaneen Fantin, “Donald Thomson's Contribution to the Study of Indigenous Ethno-A (...)

21In 2000, Paul Memmott provided a description and line drawn illustrations (drawn from Thomson’s photographs) of three types of Aboriginal elevated dwellings suggesting this architectural form was “used across the northern monsoonal areas of Australia.”49 Architect Shaneen Fantin performed her doctoral research among Yolngu people in Arnhem Land in the late 1990s-early 2000s, and with Paul Memmott reported evidence of this type of elevated housing “west of Arnhem Land as far as Darwin on the northern Territory coast (but not farther west in the Kimberley).”50 Despite the widespread use of elevated housing by Aboriginal people in Northern Australia, this typology of Aboriginal architecture has not featured at all in discussions of the origins of elevated housing in Australia in existing architectural histories.

  • 51 Howard Pearce, Homesteads of the Stony Desert, Adelaide: Rigby, 1978, p. 20; Philip Cox, J. M. Fre (...)
  • 52 Cathy Keys. “Preliminary historical notes on the transfer of Aboriginal architectural expertise on (...)

22Howard Pearce (1978) was first to note a connection between Aboriginal shade structures and European dwellings built in desert regions of South Australia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Likewise, Philip Cox, J.M. Freeland, and Wesley Stacey (1980) acknowledged that the use of bark sheets in rural buildings was derived from the building practice of First Nation peoples.51 From this beginning, architectural histories in Australia have slowly shifted in their recognition of the uptake of First Nations architectural knowledge by settlers.52

  • 53 Henry Keppel, A Visit to the Indian Archipelago, in H.M. Ship Maeander, R. Bentley, 1853, vol. 1, (...)
  • 54 James Semple Kerr, Design for Convicts: An Account of Design for Convict Establishments in the Aus (...)
  • 55 Jim Allen, Port Essington, op. cit. (note 8).
  • 56 George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, op. cit. (note 25), p. 34; Jim Allen, Port (...)
  • 57 Ray Kerkhove and Cathy Keys, “Australian Settler Bush Huts and Indigenous Bark-Strippers: Origins (...)

23British colonists on the frontier likely learned from the elevated building platforms of Aboriginal dwellings they observed in the region.53 There was an established colonial practice of military engineers adapting frontier architecture based on Indigenous practices in other parts of the world.54 Aboriginal people had lived in and around Port Essington before, at the time of, and after British settlement at Victoria.55 Aboriginal people had also assisted in the early establishment of the settlement, helping to unload the prefabricated church off the first ship to arrive in their traditional waters and land and later collecting rock oyster as a food source for the settlement.56 We do know that the transfer of Aboriginal architectural knowledge and use of Aboriginal construction skills, material harvesting, and labor occurred in other parts of settler Australia and it is likely these was an exchange of building knowledge in Northern Australia.57

Elevation across the region

  • 58 David Bridgman, “The Anglo-Asian Bungalow in Australia's Northern Territory,” in Andrew Leach, Ant (...)
  • 59 Jiat-Hwee Chang, A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture : Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscienc (...)
  • 60 A. Wilkin and Alfred C. Haddon, “Houses,” op. cit. (note 36), p. 94.

24Architectural historians like David Bridgman have been exploring regional influences on tropical housing in Northern Australia for some time.58 Studies concerning the genealogies of tropical architecture around the world have highlighted the transfer and transportation of architectural ideas associated with colonization.59 More recently, Paul Walker and Amanda Achmadi (2022) noted elevated timber houses in a 1950s painting of Cairns, in northern Australia, that featured “timber stilt houses similar to the vernacular dwelling type found across the Malay archipelago.” However, looking further afield to understand the context of house elevation at Port Essington, the phenomenon of European house elevation within the broader regional context of Australia’s Asian and Pacific neighbours was not pursued with any real vigor by early architectural historians. In contrast, regional relationships were explored from the early 1900s by anthropologists and ethnographers, who documented elevated Aboriginal dwellings. Wilkin and Haddon attach a footnote reference to their description of platform housing types linking it to the ethnographer Walter Roth’s 1910 description of the raised sleeping platform type and quoting Roth’s theories on possible regional influences.60 For in the opening paragraph of his “Huts and shelters” paper, Roth made the following statement about Aboriginal architecture in the region:

  • 61 Walter Edmund Roth, “Bulletin No 16. Huts and Shelters,” op. cit. (note 38), p. 55.

Undoubtedly there are certain definite types on which shelters and habitations are constructed, e.g. breakwinds and temporary shelters, bark-covers, huts with a square framework, huts with a dome framework—but of true genealogy or relationship it is difficult to speak with certainty. The break-winds would naturally appear first, though the ridge-pole designs with forked uprights are probably of Papuan introduction; indeed the latter arrangement is certainly connected with the square framework hut met with in the Peninsula and in the North, but whether connected in the way of progress or retrogression it is impossible to say.61

  • 62 Ibid., p. 55, footnote 1.

25However, Roth seems to counteract this speculation in an attached footnote with the point that he had observed and described mortuary platforms as far south as the area around Brisbane. “Traces of the forked-upright method of construction were met with in the scaffolding upon which the corpse was laid in the Brisbane area [south-eastern Queensland].”62

  • 63 Kaj Birket-Smith, Primitive Man and His Way: Patterns of Life in Some Native Societies, London: Od (...)
  • 64 Jacques Dumarçay, The House in South-East Asia [Translated and edited by Michael Smithies], Singap (...)

26Danish philologist and anthropologist Kaj Birket-Smith noted in 1960 that Aboriginal platform housing in Arnhem Land had “doubtless been copied from Malay fishermen.”63 Both Roth and Birket-Smith make the link between Aboriginal architecture and neighboring architecture of Southeast Asia, where there was a widespread use of “pile housing” or housing raised on stilts above land and water. Architectural historians have also shied away from placing house elevation in Australia’s tropical north within key comparative housing texts by anthropologists in the region such as Jacques Dumarcay’s The House in South-East Asia (1987); anthropologist Roxana Waterson’s book, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (1990); James Fox’s Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living (1993); and Janet Casten and Stephen Hugh-Jones’ About the House: Levi-Strauss and Beyond (1995).64

  • 65 Roxana Waterson, The Living House, op. cit. (note 60), p. 32, 78, 80, 83, 84.

27Waterson provided a comprehensive description of raised housing and vernacular architecture, establishing pile foundations (or stumps) as a defining feature of architecture in Southeast Asia. She described a range of drivers for elevation including storage, security and protection of people and animals, transportability, and burial practices.65 She provided detailed photographs, explored regional differences, and noted the shared cultural significance of this form in language:

  • 66 Ibid. (note 60.), p. 66.

Since South-East Asian architecture at its most basic essentially involves a roofed platform raised on piles, it is not surprising to find that the word ‘platform’ is quite frequently used in different languages as a synonym for ‘house’.66

  • 67 James J. Fox, op. cit. (note 60).

28The first reference to Waterson’s book (and it is only a brief mention) in the existing mainstream architectural history of stump use in Australia is in Donald Roderick’s doctoral thesis (discussed earlier). A second text concerned with the vernacular architecture of Southeast Asia was edited by anthropologist James Fox, in 1993. In Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living, Fox compared Austronesian houses in the region surrounding Australia using ethnographic studies from as far south as New Zealand, north and east to south-east Asia, Melanesia and the Pacific and north and west to Malaysia and Sumatra. Fox found symbolic meaning associated with key structural members (or “ritual attractors”) of houses found across Austronesia.67

  • 68 Joseph Reser, “The Dwelling as Motif in Aboriginal Bark Painting,” in Peter Ucko (ed.), Form in In (...)
  • 69 Paul Memmott and Shaneen Fantin, “The Study of Indigenous Ethno-Architecture in Australia,” op. ci (...)
  • 70 William Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization, op. cit. (note 44), p. 474-475.
  • 71 C. C. Macknight (ed.), The Farthest Coast: A Selection of Writings Relating to the History of the (...)
  • 72 George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, op. cit. (note 25), p. 56.
  • 73 C. C. Macknight, The Voyage to Marege’: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, Melbourne: Melb (...)

29Joseph Reser wrote of the link between symbolism in Arnhem Land bark housing and a creation story associated with the mythical Wawilak sisters recorded in bark paintings and key ceremonial cycles in Arnhem Land. He provided examples of bark paintings displaying layers of platforms held up by forked sticks, named key architectural elements and their symbolic meaning and provided a line drawing of a roofed sleeping platform and numerous photographs.68 In 2005, Memmott and Fantin suggested that “The evidence for the symbolism of the forked posts and cross poles in Arnhem Land and Cape York indicates that they were ‘ritual attractors’ in these regions of [A]boriginal Australia also.”69 Additionally, anthropologist William Lloyd Warner, in his second (1958), but not third (1969), edition of A Black Civilization, debates what he describes as possible “Malay influences” on the origin of elevated Aboriginal “mosquito houses” in Arnhem Land.70 Few architectural histories concerned with the elevated dwellings in Port Essington acknowledge the local precedent of visiting Macassans. These fishermen sailed from the central Indonesian island of Sulawesi during certain seasons to harvest trepang (sea cucumbers). While fishing, they occupied the northern coastline of Australia from the 1720s, building large smoke houses along the shorelines surrounding and within Port Essington.71 Earl tells us they were being built at Victoria72 and there is an illustration of Port Essington done in 1845 by H.S. Melville showing an elevated Macassan smokehouse (fig. 7).73

Figure 7: Macassans at Victoria, Port Essington, 1845, by H S Melville.

Figure 7: Macassans at Victoria, Port Essington, 1845, by H S Melville.

Source: The Queen Illustrated Journal and Review, London, 1862. British Library Board Colindale 078565.

  • 74 Philip Goad, Troppo: Architecture for the Top End. Balmain: Pesaro Publishing, 1999, p. 25.
  • 75 Philip N. Harris and Adrian C. Welke, Punkahs & Pith Helmets: Good Principles of Tropical House De (...)
  • 76 David Bridgman, The Anglo-Asian Bungalow: Housing the Commonwealth Officer in the Northern Tropics (...)

30While largely ignored by historians concerned with the Queensland house, architectural practitioners and academics studying tropical housing in the Northern Territory have highlighted the importance of Aboriginal and Macassan architectural precedent in northern Australia, particularly with regard to climatic responsiveness. This influence was first recognized by Troppo architects74 Phil Harris and Adrian Welke, in their 1982 publication Punkahs & Pith Helmets: Good Principles of Tropical House Design.75 David Bridgman’s research on the tropical bungalow in northern Australia also engaged with Macassan smoke houses as a possible “model” for elevation at Port Essington in his doctoral thesis.76 Moreover, he opens his book Acclimatisation: Architecture at the Top End of Australia (2003) with a description of both Aboriginal and Macassan architecture. Nevertheless, after making this connection, Bridgman notes:

  • 77 David Bridgman, Acclimatisation: Architecture at the Top End of Australia, Canberra: Royal Austral (...)

These buildings, however, were far removed from British ideas of a ‘house’ and as a consequence had little known impact on early European housing. When the early settlers started to build they preferred to look to their homeland or to other European colonies for more familiar architectural models.77

  • 78 Miles Lewis, “Off the Ground,” op. cit. (note 5), p. 33.

31A decade later, architectural historian Miles Lewis briefly mentions that high-set housing was found in areas near and north of Australia in the Southeast Asian archipelago, observing elevated housing “precedents that go back to the Neolithic period.” Alongside his discussion of Port Essington, he provided an 1846 image of elevated Macassan smokehouses at a nearby but deserted colonial settlement, but did not elaborate on this connection.78

Conclusion

32While not mutually exclusive, there are multiple reasons for house elevation in northern Australia, including ideas about disaster, discomfort, development, and disease. Exploring the ethnographic and anthropological record, and applying a social and cultural lens to existing knowledge of elevated vernacular architecture at Port Essington, Northern Australia, has revealed a diverse tradition of elevated Indigenous architectures across the region, suggesting the possibility of exchanges of architectural knowledge between Indigenous peoples and British settlers. The sheer diversity of Indigenous precedents of elevated dwellings in Northern Australia, surrounding the settlement where British dwellings were first elevated in Australia, invites a more rigorous investigation of the possibilities of the transfer of Aboriginal architectural knowledge and regional influence into early colonial settlement architectures.

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Notes

1 J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History, Melbourne: Cheshire, 1968, p. 209.

2 Andrew L. Jenner, The Building of the Queensland House 1880-1920: A Carpenters Handbook and Owner's Manual, 2nd ed., Brisbane: Clark & Mackay, 2012.

3 Peter Bell, A History of the Queensland House, Research Report, Adelaide: Historical Research Pty Ltd, December 2002, p. 22, 23.

4 Robin Boyd, Australia’s Home: Its Origins, Builders and Occupiers, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1952, p. 195; J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia, op. cit. (note 1); C. R. Sumner and J. Oliver, “Early North Queensland Housing as Response to Environment,” Australian Geographer, vol. 14, no. 1, 1978, p. 14-21. DOI: 10.1080/00049187808702727; Peter Bell, Timber and Iron: Houses in North Queensland Mining Settlements, 1861-1920, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1984; Donald Watson, “The Queensland House: A Report into the Nature and Evolution of Significant Aspects of Domestic Architecture in Queensland,” Research Report, Brisbane: National Trust of Queensland, 1981; Robert Riddel, “Sheeted in Iron: Queensland,” in Trevor Howells and Michael Nicholson (eds.), Towards the Dawn: Federation Architecture in Australia 1890-1915, Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1990, p. 108-27; Ian Evans and The National Trust of Queensland, The Queensland House: History and Conservation, Mullumbimby: Flannel Flower Press, 2001.

5 J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia, op. cit. (note 1), p. 207; Philip Cox, J. M. Freeland and Wesley Stacey, Rude Timber Buildings in Australia, London; Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1980, p. 63; Ray Sumner, Settlers and Habitat in Tropical Queensland, [Townsville, Qld.]: James Cook University of North Queensland, 1974 (Monograph Series, 6), p. 18; Peter Bell, Timber and Iron, op. cit. (note 3), p. 96. There has been one challenge to the claim that these were the first elevated houses in Australia, but it focuses on a southern region of Australia rather than the Tropics—see Miles Lewis, “Off the Ground,” Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, vol. 8, no. 1, 1997, p. 20-46. DOI: 10.1080/10331867.1997.10525108.

6 Jim Allen, “The Archaeology of Nineteenth-Century British Imperialism: An Australian Case Study,” World Archaeology, vol. 5, no. 1, 1973, p. 47. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/124152. Accessed 3 October 2023; Peter G.Spillett, Forsaken Settlement: An Illustrated History of the Settlement of Victoria, Port Essington North Australia 1838-1849, Melbourne: Landowne, 1972, p. 22, 29; Donald Charles Roderick, The Origins of the Elevated Queensland House, Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, 2004, p. 172-182.

7 Jim Allen, “The Archaeology of Nineteenth-Century British Imperialism,” op. cit. (note 6), p. 48.

8 Cathy Keys, “Diversifying the early history of the prefabricated colonial house in Moreton Bay,” Queensland Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 2019, p. 87-88.

9 Jim Allen, Port Essington: The Historical Archaeology of a North Australian Nineteenth-Century Military Outpost, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2008 (Studies in Australasian Historical Archaeology ,1), p. 121.

10 J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia, op. cit. (note 1), p. 118.

11 Peter Newell, “The Origins and Development of the Single Family House in Queensland,” Research Report, Second draft for submission to Board of Architects of Queensland Award, 1974 - Part one only completed, 1974, p. 38,39; Ray Sumner, “Pioneer Homesteads of North Queensland,” Lectures on North Queensland History, 1974, p. 18.

12 Donald Watson, “The Queensland House,” op. cit. (note 4), p. 7.4.

13 Balwant Singh Sini, The Australian House: Homes of the Tropical North, Sydney, New York, NY: Lansdowne Press, 1982, p. 56.

14 Donald Watson, “The Queensland House,” op. cit. (note 4), p. 7.4-7.5.

15 Peter Bell, Timber and Iron, op. cit. (note 3), p. 95-97.

16 Ibid., p. 96.

17 John Archer, Building a Nation: A History of the Australian House, Sydney: William Collins, 1987, p. 102.

18 Miles Lewis, “Off the Ground,” op. cit. (note 5), p. 33.

19 Donald Charles Roderick, The Origins of the Elevated Queensland House, op. cit. (note 6), p. 179-182.

20 David Bridgman, “The Anglo-Asian Bungalow: Housing the Commonwealth Officer in the Northern Tropics of Australia,” Ph.D. dissertation, School of Architecture and Design, RMIT, Melbourne: RMIT, 2006, p. 46-49.

21 Ian Evans and The National Trust of Queensland, The Queensland House, op. cit. (note 4), p. 28.

22 Russell Jones, “George Windsor Earl and ‘Indonesia’,” Indonesia Circle, vol. 22, no. 64, 1994, p. 283.

23 Bob Reece, “The Australasian Career of George Windsor Earl,” Journal of Northern Territory History, vol. 3, 1992, p. 2-3.

24 George Windsor Earl, The Eastern Seas, or, Voyages and Adventures in the Indian Archipelago in 1832-33-34: Comprising a Tour of the Island of Java, Visits to Borneo, the Malay Peninsula, Siam, Etc., Also an Account of the Present State of Singapore with Observations on the Commercial Resources of the Archipelago, London: Wm. H. Allen, 1837, p. 66, 221, 261.

25 George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, London: Madden and Malcolm, 1846, p. 93-98.

26 Donald Charles Roderick, The Orgins of the Elevated Queensland House, op. cit. (note 6), p. 36, 37.

27 George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, op. cit. (note 25), p. 94, 96.

28 For a full list of Earl’s publications, see Appendix 3 of R. H. W. Reece, “Introduction” in George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, Darwin: NTU Press, 2002 (1846), p. 26-27.

29 Dora Howard, “English Activities on the North Coast of Australia during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia: South Australia Branch, vol. 33, 1933, p. 21-194; Carl Gibson-Hill, “George Samuel Windsor Earl,” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 32, no. 1, 1959, p. 105-53. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40073645; Bob Reece, “The Australasian Career of George Windsor Earl,” op. cit. (note 23), p. 1-23; Russell Jones, “George Windsor Earl and ‘Indonesia’,” op. cit. (note 22), p. 279-90.

30 George Windsor Earl , Enterprise in Tropical Australia, op. cit. (note 25), p. 47; Idem, “George Windsor Earl to Captain Francis Beaufort, Hydrographic Office, London 15 December 1838,” in J. M. R. Cameron and Historical Society of the Northern Territory, Letters from Port Essington, 1838-1845, Darwin, N.T: Historical Society of the Northern Territory, 1999, p. 24.

31 George Windsor Earl, “George Windsor Earl to Captain Francis Beaufort, Hydrographic Office, London 15 December 1838,” op. cit. (note 30), p. 29-31.

32 R. H. W. Reece, “Introduction,” op. cit. (note 29), p. 7.

33 John Lort Stokes, Discoveries in Australia: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle in the Years 1837-43: Also a Narrative of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea/by J. Lort Stokes, London: T. & W. Boone, 1846, 2 vol.

34 Philip Parker King, Narrative of a Survey of the Inter-Tropical and Western Coasts of Australia: Performed between the Years 1818 and 1822 with an Appendix Containing Various Subjects Relating to Hydrography and Natural History, London: Murray, 1827, p. 72; Ludwig Leichhardt, Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia from Moreton Bay to Port Essington a Distance of Upwards of 3000 Miles, During the Years 1844-1845, London: T & W Boone, 1847, p. 290, 470.

35 Ludwig Leichhardt, Journal of an Overland Expedition, op. cit. (note 34), p. 290.

36 A. Wilkin and Alfred C. Haddon, “Houses” in Alfred Haddon (ed.), Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait. 4. Arts and Crafts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912, p. 93-94.

37 Edward Palmer, Early Days in North Queensland, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1903, p. 212-213.

38 Walter Edmund Roth, “Bulletin No 16. Huts and Shelters,” in K. F. Macintyre (ed.), The Queensland Aborigines, Victoria Park: Hesperian Press, 1984 (1910) (Aboriginal Studies Series, 4), p. 65-66.

39 Donald Thomson, “The Seasonal Factor in Human Culture. Illustrated from the Life of a Contemporary Nomadic Group,” Proceedings of the Prehistorical Society of London, 1939, p. 209-221.

40 Ibid. (note 39), p. 218-219.

41 Shaneen Fantin, “Housing Aboriginal Culture in North-East Arnhem Land,” Ph.D. dissertation, St Lucia, The University of Queensland, 2003, p. 94.

42 Paul Memmott and Shaneen Fantin, “The Study of Indigenous Ethno-Architecture in Australia,” in Bruce Rigsby and Nicolas Peterson (eds.), Donald Thomson: The Man and Scholar, Canberra: Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia with support from Museum Victoria, 2005, p. 189-90.

43 Donald Thomson, Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land, Melbourne: Macmillan and Co., 1949, p. 16.

44 William Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization – A social study of an Australian tribe, Chicago, IL: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1958 (1937), p. 474.

45 Ibid. (note 44), p. 473-5.

46 William Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe. Revised edition ed. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1969 (1937).

47 R. M. Berndt, Kunapipi, New York, NY: International University Press, 1951; William Lloyd Warner , A Black Civilization, op. cit. (note 44); Joseph Reser, “The Dwelling as Motif in Aboriginal Bark Painting,” in Peter J. Ucko (ed.), Form in Indigenous Art: Schematisation in the Art of Australia and Prehistoric Europe, Canberra; London: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and Gerald Duckworth, 1977, p. 211.

48 Joseph Reser, “Values in Bark: Traditional Aboriginal Dwellings,” Hemisphere, vol. 22, no. 10, October 1978, p. 29.

49 Paul Memmott, “The Way It Was: Customary Camps and Houses in the Southern Gulf of Carpentaria,” in Peter Read (ed.), Settlement: A History of Australian Indigenous Housing, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2000, p. 15-40.

50 Paul Memmott and Shaneen Fantin, “Donald Thomson's Contribution to the Study of Indigenous Ethno-Architecture in Australia,” in Bruce Rigsby and N. Peterson (eds.), Centenary Anniversary Symposium on Donald Thomson, Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2001, p. 19.

51 Howard Pearce, Homesteads of the Stony Desert, Adelaide: Rigby, 1978, p. 20; Philip Cox, J. M. Freeland and Wesley Stacey, Rude Timber Buildings in Australia, London: Angus & Robertson, 1980 (1969), p. 27.

52 Cathy Keys. “Preliminary historical notes on the transfer of Aboriginal architectural expertise on Australia’s frontier,” Fabrications, vol. 25, no. 1, 2015, p. 48-61. DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2015.1009413.

53 Henry Keppel, A Visit to the Indian Archipelago, in H.M. Ship Maeander, R. Bentley, 1853, vol. 1, p. 157, 165.

54 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 (N.S.W.); the Australian Society for Historical Archaeology, 1984, p. 170-172; Noni Boyd and Jean Rice, “Analysing Nineteenth Century Military Building Typologies: An Australian Perspective,” in C. A. Brebbia and C. Clark (eds.), Defence Sites: Heritage and Future, Ashurst: WIT Press, 2014, p. 87-98 (WIT Transactions on The Built Environment); John Weiler, “Colonial Connections: Royal Engineers and Building Technology Transfer in the Nineteenth Century,” Construction History: Journal of the Construction History Group, vol. 2, 1996, p. 3-18. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41613759. Accessed 6 October 2023.

55 Jim Allen, Port Essington, op. cit. (note 8).

56 George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, op. cit. (note 25), p. 34; Jim Allen, Port Essington, op. cit. (note 8), p. 48.

57 Ray Kerkhove and Cathy Keys, “Australian Settler Bush Huts and Indigenous Bark-Strippers: Origins and Influences,” Queensland Review, vol. 27, no. 1, 2020, p. 1-20; 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, Clayton South: CSIRO Publishing, 2018, p. 151-172.

58 David Bridgman, “The Anglo-Asian Bungalow in Australia's Northern Territory,” in Andrew Leach, Antony Moulis and Nicole Scully (eds.), Shifting Views: Selected Essays on the Architectural History of Australia and New Zealand, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2008, p. 167-76. David Bridgman, Acclimatisation: Architecture at the Top End of Australia, Canberra: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2003; Philip N. Harris and Adrian C. Welke, Punkahs & Pith Helmets: Good Principles of Tropical House Design, Darwin: Troppo’s Architects of Darwin, 1982.

59 Jiat-Hwee Chang, A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture : Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience, London: New York, NY: Routledge, 2016 (Architext Series); Jiat-Hwee Chang and Anthony D. King, “Towards a Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Historical Fragments of Power-Knowledge, Built Environment and Climate in the British Colonial Territories,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, vol. 32, no. 3, 2011, p. 283-300. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9493.2011.00434.x.

60 A. Wilkin and Alfred C. Haddon, “Houses,” op. cit. (note 36), p. 94.

61 Walter Edmund Roth, “Bulletin No 16. Huts and Shelters,” op. cit. (note 38), p. 55.

62 Ibid., p. 55, footnote 1.

63 Kaj Birket-Smith, Primitive Man and His Way: Patterns of Life in Some Native Societies, London: Odhams Press, 1960, p. 37.

64 Jacques Dumarçay, The House in South-East Asia [Translated and edited by Michael Smithies], Singapore, Oxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987; Roxana Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990; James J. Fox (ed.), Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living. Canberra: Department of Anthropology in association with the Comparative Austronesian Project, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, 1993; Janet Carsten and Stephen Hugh-Jones, “Introduction: About the House: LéVi-Strauss and Beyond,” in Janet Carsten and Stephen Hugh-Jones (eds.), About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond, Cambridge, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 1-46.

65 Roxana Waterson, The Living House, op. cit. (note 60), p. 32, 78, 80, 83, 84.

66 Ibid. (note 60.), p. 66.

67 James J. Fox, op. cit. (note 60).

68 Joseph Reser, “The Dwelling as Motif in Aboriginal Bark Painting,” in Peter Ucko (ed.), Form in Indigenous Art: Schematisation in the Art of Australia and Prehistoric Europe, Canberra; London: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and Gerald Duckworth, 1977, p. 211-219.

69 Paul Memmott and Shaneen Fantin, “The Study of Indigenous Ethno-Architecture in Australia,” op. cit. (note 42), p. 208.

70 William Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization, op. cit. (note 44), p. 474-475.

71 C. C. Macknight (ed.), The Farthest Coast: A Selection of Writings Relating to the History of the Northern Coast of Australia, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1969.

72 George Windsor Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, op. cit. (note 25), p. 56.

73 C. C. Macknight, The Voyage to Marege’: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1976, plate 11.

74 Philip Goad, Troppo: Architecture for the Top End. Balmain: Pesaro Publishing, 1999, p. 25.

75 Philip N. Harris and Adrian C. Welke, Punkahs & Pith Helmets: Good Principles of Tropical House Design, Darwin: Troppo's Architects of Darwin, 1982.

76 David Bridgman, The Anglo-Asian Bungalow: Housing the Commonwealth Officer in the Northern Tropics of Australia, Ph.D. dissertation, RMIT, Melbourne, 2006, p. 39-44.

77 David Bridgman, Acclimatisation: Architecture at the Top End of Australia, Canberra: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2003, p. 7.

78 Miles Lewis, “Off the Ground,” op. cit. (note 5), p. 33.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: Queensland House, Red Hill, Brisbane, ca.1920.
Crédits Source: Brisbane (Australia), State Library of Queensland, John Oxley Library, Negative number: 159519. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/​10462/​deriv/​110589. Accessed 18 January 2018.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/15204/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 851k
Titre Figure 2: Map of Australia showing location of Port Essington.
Crédits Source: drawn by Linda Thomson. Brisbane (Australia), Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, April 2016.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/15204/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 496k
Titre Figure 3: English settlement at Port Essington, c.1840.
Crédits Source: Ernest August Goupil, lithograph by Emile Lassalle, plate 119 of: Jules Dumont d'Urville, Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans l'Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée exécuté par l’ordre du Roi 1837-1838-1839-1840. Atlas pittoresque, tome second, Paris: Gide et Cie éditeurs, 1846.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/15204/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 431k
Titre Figure 4: Elevated Officers Quarters (left rear), Port Essington after cyclone, “Ruins of the Church Victoria,” December 25, 1844.
Crédits Source: Pencil sketch by Owen Stanley, Volume 1: Voyage of H.M.S. Britomart from 1837 to 1843. Australia (Sydney), State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/15204/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 889k
Titre Figure 5: English settlement at Port Essington, c. 1840.
Crédits Source: Louis LeBreton, lithograph by Sabatier, plate 120 of: Jules Dumont d'Urville, Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans l'Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée exécuté par l’ordre du Roi 1837-1838-1839-1840. Atlas pittoresque, tome second, Paris: Gide et Cie éditeurs, 1846.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/15204/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 301k
Titre Figure 6: Aboriginal elevated living environments, Arnhem Land, c. 1981.
Crédits Source: Photograph provided by Joe Reser from his personal collection.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/15204/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 446k
Titre Figure 7: Macassans at Victoria, Port Essington, 1845, by H S Melville.
Crédits Source: The Queen Illustrated Journal and Review, London, 1862. British Library Board Colindale 078565.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/15204/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
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Cathy Keys, « House elevation and the British military settlement of Port Essington in Northern Australia »ABE Journal [En ligne], 22 | 2023, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2023, consulté le 15 novembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/15204 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.15204

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Cathy Keys

School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia Orcid: 0000-0002-0797-4196

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