Rooftops

The rooftops of Tin City run along the dune ridge in a line of mismatched corrugated iron, each one a different colour and pitch. Some are flat skillion roofs in pale red Colorbond, some are single-pitched in bare galvanised steel, one is patched in three different shades of green. The seams between sheets are visible from above; each roof is built up from whatever cladding was available when it was put on or repaired. Sand has built up against the windward edges of the lower roofs in shallow drifts. The line of rooftops reads as a single continuous repair history made visible.

The shacks at Tin City have been roofed and re-roofed for nearly a century. The original Depression-era structures used whatever materials could be carried in across the dunes; the post-war rebuild used driftwood and discarded military crates that washed up on the beach. Modern repairs add Colorbond and corrugated iron from the hardware stores in Newcastle or Port Stephens. No two roofs match because no two roofs were built at the same time or by the same people. The 11 remaining shacks continue under the Worimi Conservation Lands Plan of Management 2015. The licence system allows the roofs to be patched and maintained; it does not allow a destroyed shack to be replaced.