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Cooee - Australia in the 19th Century

Shelter

Colonial Sydney was a planning muddle, with most people living in very tumbledown conditions. Government House at Sydney Cove was the grandest residence, and wealthy emancipated convicts or free settlers sought to emulate it at their nearby villas and farms.

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John William Lewin (1770–1819)
Scene in the Australian bush c.1810
sepia wash drawing; 22.5 x 17.5 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK6066
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Meanwhile, encouraged by the lack of large dangerous native animals, the British took to the bush with great confidence: as explorers, surveyors, or searchers for farmland, they lived more simply under canvas.

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Unknown artist
Interior of settlers hut 1860s
pencil drawing; 20.5 x 30.5 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK9895
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When settled, a squatter would build a more substantial hut, cosily decorated with some reminders of Home.

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Stanley Leighton (1837–1901)
Binnum Binnum, Mr. H. Jones’s, Tattiara country, South Australia, Sunday 3rd May, 1868
watercolour; 8.7 x 33.5 cm
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Presented by Miss Rachel Leighton

The homestead, surrounded by outbuildings, a garden, and cultivated fields, is one of the most distinctive features of Australian rural landscape in the second half of the 19th century. The grazier and his family kept cool under shady verandahs, an innovation probably brought from India.

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W.F.
Sitting room, Warwick Castle, Warwick, Queensland 1878
watercolour; 17.5 x 25.2 cm
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Whether the scene was the Western District of Victoria, the Riverina in New South Wales, or the Darling Downs in Queensland, watercolours and photographs survive as important documents revealing the manner in which Australians furnished their houses.

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Henry Wray (1824–1900)
Convict prison, accommodation 870, Fremantle,
W. Australia, designed and erected by Captains Henderson & Wray, R.E.
1859
watercolour; 17.4 x 48.0 cm
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Australia had been established as a gaol and a naval/military outpost, and for many, shelter meant the convict or regimental barracks. Although transportation ceased earlier in the eastern colonies, it continued until 1868 in Western Australia, where Henry Wray of the Royal Engineers constructed the Convict Establishment, subsequently the Fremantle prison.