Your cart
Nothing saved yet. Start with the current series or browse the full archive.
01 Tin CityAnna Bay2018
ISO 1801/200f/8.0200mm
Series · 37 prints
Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap
Tin City is the local name for a group of huts behind the frontal dune on Stockton Bight, in the Worimi Conservation Lands between Newcastle and Port Stephens, New South Wales, on Worimi country. In 2015 there were 11, all single storey and clad in corrugated iron, with gable or skillion roofs. Most were built in the 1970s and 1980s; the oldest still standing that year dated from December 1970 and the youngest from 1992.
The huts at Tin City are linked to the history of recreational fishing along the beach, and in 2015 they were still in use, with fishing popular among their owners. In January 2014 Tin City had no power, no water and no sewerage. Since the 1970s and 1980s some huts have been demolished or destroyed, and others rebuilt or moved within Tin City, modernised and in some cases expanded.
The mobile dunes of Stockton Bight are the largest continuous mobile sand mass in New South Wales. They reach up to 40 metres above sea level and migrate inland at about 4 metres a year on average. Tin City is affected by sand drift, and depending on the weather the occupants protect the huts from erosion or from inundation by windblown sand.
Tin City was assessed in 2006 as having local heritage significance. On 1 February 2007 the land was returned to Worimi ownership: the Worimi Local Aboriginal Land Council holds the title on behalf of the registered Worimi owners and leases it back to the NSW Government, and the 4029 hectares of the Worimi Conservation Lands are reserved as Worimi National Park, Worimi State Conservation Area and Worimi Regional Park. The Plan of Management for the Lands, adopted on 1 September 2015, directs that a licence be established for the hut sites at Tin City, prohibiting new huts, the expansion or relocation of any hut, and permanent residency.
Worimi Conservation Lands Plan of Management (2015) and Tim Elliot in the Newcastle Herald (2014)
Hand-signed and numbered, printed from the original RAW file. Open editions in the two smallest sizes; limited editions of 100, 50 and 25 in the three larger, never reissued once they sell through.
Made to order by Brett in Sydney, from the original RAW file. Each print is hand-signed and numbered before it ships.
Paper
Ilford Galerie cotton rag, 310 gsm. Acrylic on metallic gloss, 260 gsm.
Lead time
Unframed: 5 to 10 business days. Framed and acrylic: 10 to 20.
The sand is deep enough here that you sink past your ankles between shacks. Eleven of them left now, corrugated iron and driftwood and whatever else washed up after the war. They sit in the Stockton Bight dune...
Read the noteThe Worimi Aboriginal and Traditional Owners hold mixed views about the long-term occupation of the huts at Tin City. Many Worimi people alive today have lived through dispossession and the control successive governments exercised over Aboriginal lives. For many of them, the Plan of Management records, "it is inconceivable that government authorities would have allowed any Aboriginal people to establish something akin to Tin City, and that any such attempt by Aboriginal people would have met with immediate eviction."
Other huts were built in the 1970s and 1980s several kilometres either side of Tin City, and were later destroyed. In 2015 the rusting remains of some of them were often exposed, depending on how the sand drifted.
