Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/67

 opening aboye it, the whole height of the pitch of the roof: behind it there is a kitchen. The other huts consist of men's hut, store hut, shed for carts, overseer's hut, &c.: at a greater distance there is a wool-shed, generally a large building.

I have thus, by giving a detailed account of one individual hut, endeavoured to obtain something fixed to start from in varying the description, so as to make it more general. Some huts are better and many worse, than what I have described: it is rather under than over the usual size—the mode mentioned of dividing sitting-room and bed-room by a screen is almost universal. I only allude to bachelor's huts; where married people reside in the bush, there is of course much more accommodation. Slabs are the most common material for building. These are a kind of plank, generally about two inches thick, and varying in width from eight inches to a foot: they are obtained by splitting with wedges the gum tree, the stringy bark and iron bark. The mode of building is this: Upright comer-posts, of about a foot in diameter, are fixed firmly in the ground, being sunk about two foot deep; a wall-plate is placed at top, from one to the other of these, and firmly secured, and a sleeper at bottom, so as to connect all together, and form a kind of frame. Both wall-plate and sleeper are grooved, and the slabs are fitted into the grooves, and run up close together. Some huts are roofed with the bark of the stringy bark, or with that of the box tree; many are thatched with a kind of wire grass, and a few are roofed with a kind of large shingle called broad paling.