Tin Drovers Hut

The hut is a simple thing. Four walls of corrugated iron, heavily rusted, standing on open country in rural New South Wales. No lean-to, no visible additions, no sign of anything beyond the minimum required to keep weather off a person for a night or a season. The surrounding landscape is wide and dry, the plains stretching out in every direction. Structures like this served drovers moving stock across the Monaro and surrounding country. They were not built to last in any ambitious sense. A basic hut could be erected in two to three weeks, and corrugated iron, as it replaced bark and timber shingles across the nineteenth century, made construction faster still. What the research record describes as the "usual" settler's approach to building was practical rather than permanent: put up what was needed, add to it when there was time and money, and move on when the land or the season demanded it. The galvanised iron on this hut has moved well past silver-grey into the deep brown-red that characterises older iron exposed to decades of sun, rain, and dry air. The research file notes that pre-1900 corrugated iron on the Monaro typically presents at this colour range, though a specific construction date for this structure is not documented. The Australian Alps national parks protect over 200 historic huts across New South Wales, Victoria, and the ACT. Volunteer organisations maintain them using traditional techniques. This hut sits outside that network, on the open plains rather than in the high country, with no formal heritage listing and no institutional record. The A Place to Call Home series, photographed by Brett Patman between 2016 and 2019, documents structures in exactly this position: between the formally protected alpine huts and the heritage schedules of the regional councils, in the gap where collapse is the most likely outcome. This photograph was made in 2018.