The Construction of Aboriginal Dwellings and Histories in the Wet Tropics

Abstract

Despite recent, noteworthy scholarship on indigenous architecture in Australia, the record of pre-colonial settlement patterns, dwellings and building practices is still slight. This paper adds to the limited historiographies that refer directly to Aboriginal building practices. It focuses on the built environments of the Girramay people in the Wet Tropics Region of northeastern Queensland. Girramay building traditions persisted into the twentieth century, partly because of late and discontinuous contact histories. Close examination of the archival data was augmented by oral histories and the reconstruction of twelve traditional dwellings between 2002 and 2004. Drawing on these various methods and techniques, this paper attempts to refine the interpretation of this particular building tradition and counter the generalisations made in previous literature. It also demonstrates the limits of historiography based on archives that originate from members of the settler society.