In a remote corner of NSW's Royal National Park, beach huts lie amid the folds and foothills of lush Black Gin Gully, which rises above Little Garie beach. "Some shacks were built by the ocean so they could get the view. Others, like ours, are close to the creek," says Billy Burn, 73, whose father-in-law, a miner from nearby Helensburgh, built a shack here in 1942. "It was great when the kids were little. We would fill two buckets with water and bring them back to wash the nappies."
Inside, the shack is filled with 1940s technology: a bright-blue kerosene fridge, a lime-and-cream enamelled kerosene oven, a blackened metho burner and a row of old kerosene lamps hanging from nails. There's 1950s bric-a-brac, too - a laminex table in sparkling yellow and carpet tiles on the floor - but these days there are solar panels on the roof. "The grandkids just come in and flick on the lights," says Billy, smiling. "They don't remember what it used to be like."
There are 143 beach shacks in this section of the park, about 50km south of Sydney: 20 shacks at Little Garie, 95 at South Era and another 28 at Burning Palms. Most date back to the 1930s; they represent a moment in time, a long-since faded slice of Australian history. In the '30s and '40s, miners from Helensburgh, at the southern edge of the park, came to the coast looking for a weekend escape. Holidaymakers from Sydney trekked south too: surfers, bushwalkers and families looking for a cheap getaway.
Beach shacks: from basic living to holiday paradise
During the Great Depression, families lived there out of desperation, surviving on wild rabbits, fish and home-grown vegetables. At the time, pockets of land were still privately owned in the park. Holidaymakers paid two shillings a week (about $8 today) to erect tents and rough bark huts. Later, they built permanent cabins, usually with a main room and smaller bedroom, hastily constructed with nails and bits of weatherboard and finished off with corrugated iron, planks of driftwood, other jetsam and local stone.
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