#: locale=en
## Tour
### Description
tour.description = A Virtual Tour by Randwick City Council
### Title
tour.name = La Perouse Museum
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HTMLText_01129771_25FE_8EE0_41C0_73A652E78A8C.html = Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
All plastic fragments were collected from Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach & Coogee Beach.
City to Surf
Washed Up Plastic / 2019
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Clay model of a
La Perouse tin shack (2015)
Dr Peter McKenzie
Clay, paint, mixed media
A clay model of the La Perouse tin shack in which Dr Peter McKenzie (a member of the local La Perouse Aboriginal community), and his family lived c.1950s. Peter uses the model VW beetle to show the scale of the shack. Note the cloth door to the dunny, and the louvre window.
The actual shack can be seen in the faded photograph; with Peter's mother hanging out the washing out front.
Collection of Dr Peter McKenzie.
Single men in a shared hut c. 1932
Many of the stories relating to Happy Valley show that people from all different backgrounds ended up in the Unemployment camps. Lecturers and teachers lived elbow-to-elbow with those from the labouring classes.
This image shows probably single men in their shared hut. If you look closely you see some classic novels piled up at the end of their beds amongst the newspapers and folded clothes.
Sydney Morning Herald Collection
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Depression-era work table, c.1930s -1940s
Crates of “Vacuum Oil”
Private Collection.
Depression-era work table, c.1930s -1940s
Crates of “Vacuum Oil”
Private Collection.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Burned “La Perouse” boomerang art Shellwork boomerang
La Perouse artists (date unknown)
Wood and fabric, shells, animal glue, cardboard
The skilled Aboriginal artists of La Perouse began these art traditions in the late 19th century, and which evolved into a successful tourism trade iconic to this area. This was a critical form of income especially during the Great Depression.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Burned “La Perouse” boomerang art Shellwork boomerang
La Perouse artists (date unknown)
Wood and fabric, shells, animal glue, cardboard
The skilled Aboriginal artists of La Perouse began these art traditions in the late 19th century, and which evolved into a successful tourism trade iconic to this area. This was a critical form of income especially during the Great Depression.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
City to Surf
Washed up plastic (2019)
All plastic fragments were collected from Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach & Coogee Beach, NSW.
City to Surf
Washed up plastic (2019)
All plastic fragments were collected from Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach & Coogee Beach, NSW.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Kerosene stove (“spirateri”) used in camp Hill 60, Yarra Bay, La Perouse. Brought from Malta. 1951
Iron, mixed metals, canvas strips
Criminale family reunited with their father Frank, Hill 60, June 1951
Black and white photograph
Pauline’s winning entry in Randwick Council’s 2006 “A Migrant’s Story” catalogue
Randwick City Council 2006
Migration Heritage Centre collateral, featuring the Criminale’s spirateri
Powerhouse Museum
Collection of Mrs Pauline Peadon (nee Criminale)
We arrived from Malta in 1951; the photo shows me and my four sisters in winter clothes, most likely taken by our mother Connie Criminale (nee Bonnett) in June 1951 after we had just arrived off the boat and met our dad Frank. (L-R) Carmen, Frances, Pauline (in the middle), Mary and Ann in my Dad’s arms. My brother Tony Criminale was born at Yarra Bay, and I have another sister Theresa “Terry” Child.
My dad had arrived here earlier, he had bought a shanty at Hill 60; we moved in there and had five girls to one bed. Mum brought with her some clothes and this kerosene stove; she’d cook for all of us at Yarra Bay on it.
Interview with the Curator, 27 February 2020, Matraville.
Kerosene stove (“spirateri”) used in camp Hill 60, Yarra Bay, La Perouse. Brought from Malta. 1951
Iron, mixed metals, canvas strips
Criminale family reunited with their father Frank, Hill 60, June 1951
Black and white photograph
Pauline’s winning entry in Randwick Council’s 2006 “A Migrant’s Story” catalogue
Randwick City Council 2006
Migration Heritage Centre collateral, featuring the Criminale’s spirateri
Powerhouse Museum
Collection of Mrs Pauline Peadon (nee Criminale)
We arrived from Malta in 1951; the photo shows me and my four sisters in winter clothes, most likely taken by our mother Connie Criminale (nee Bonnett) in June 1951 after we had just arrived off the boat and met our dad Frank. (L-R) Carmen, Frances, Pauline (in the middle), Mary and Ann in my Dad’s arms. My brother Tony Criminale was born at Yarra Bay, and I have another sister Theresa “Terry” Child.
My dad had arrived here earlier, he had bought a shanty at Hill 60; we moved in there and had five girls to one bed. Mum brought with her some clothes and this kerosene stove; she’d cook for all of us at Yarra Bay on it.
Interview with the Curator, 27 February 2020, Matraville.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
All plastic fragments were collected from Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach & Coogee Beach, NSW.
All plastic fragments were collected from Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach & Coogee Beach, NSW.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Single men in a shared hut c. 1932
Many of the stories relating to Happy Valley show that people from all different backgrounds ended up in the Unemployment camps. Lecturers and teachers lived elbow-to-elbow with those from the labouring classes.
This image shows probably single men in their shared hut. If you look closely you see some classic novels piled up at the end of their beds amongst the newspapers and folded clothes.
Sydney Morning Herald Collection
Single men in a shared hut c. 1932
Many of the stories relating to Happy Valley show that people from all different backgrounds ended up in the Unemployment camps. Lecturers and teachers lived elbow-to-elbow with those from the labouring classes.
This image shows probably single men in their shared hut. If you look closely you see some classic novels piled up at the end of their beds amongst the newspapers and folded clothes.
Sydney Morning Herald Collection
Housed in a heritage building at La Perouse in the south of our city, the La Perouse Museum is a multi-disciplinary museum that tells many stories up to the present day.
The Museum is housed in the iconic 1882 Cable Station in Guriwal La Perouse, and tells the continuing stories of one of the most fascinating and important suburbs in Sydney.
Free Admission.
Opening Hours:
Wednesday and Friday 10am - 2pm
Saturday and Sunday 10am - 4pm
Phone: 02 9093 6190
Housed in a heritage building at La Perouse in the south of our city, the La Perouse Museum is a multi-disciplinary museum that tells many stories up to the present day. The Museum is housed in the iconic 1882 Cable Station in Guriwal La Perouse, and tells the continuing stories of one of the most fascinating and important suburbs in Sydney.
Free Admission.
Opening Hours:
Wednesday and Friday 10am - 2pm
Saturday and Sunday 10am - 4pm
Phone: 02 9093 6190
Why La Perouse
From the start of the British colonisation of Australia in the late eighteenth century to recent decades, the La Perouse area – including Botany Bay and the Kamay Kurnell Peninsula – was viewed by Europeans to be a ‘wild place’. This perception led to its use to accommodate the city’s so-called outcasts.
At first Aboriginal families from Sydney and the NSW South Coast established permanently at La Perouse – including some who’s traditional Country this area is. When the Great Depression hit, working-class families of Anglo-Celtic backgrounds also arrived here, along with other European-origin families who migrated to Australia during the inter-war (and later, the post-WWII) era.
The relative isolation of La Perouse made it a more ‘acceptable’ place to house unemployed men and their families, and particularly to those not empathetic to people of non-Anglo-Celtic, or working-class, backgrounds.
Scientific racism and the British class system, brought to Australia and advanced by colonial authorities, underpinned the prejudices that shaped these prejudiced views. There were, however, some who were sympathetic to the struggles faced by the residents of the La Perouse camps and gave both material and moral support to them throughout the decade of the Depression.
From a practical perspective, the foreshores of Botany Bay were ideal places for Depression-era living and by poor families as these areas:
…possessed many natural features conducive to cheap, temporary residence: the sea could be used for bathing; the scrubby coastal health afforded good shelter for huts; streams and springs provided access to a fresh water supply; and there were fish in the Bay. (Maria Nugent, Botany Bay: Where Histories Meet, Allen & Unwin, 2005)
For some of these families too they wanted to be isolated and away from the constant gaze of those that judged their poverty and way of life.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Children at Happy Valley, c.1932
Healthy, happy toddlers, captured by a visiting photographer, are posed in front of a slab-hut at Happy Valley. This was probably for a SHM feature.
Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald Collection.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
'We were poor but happy ...'
– The Depression camps at La Perouse
This exhibition is a glimpse at the life of a community of people who lived at a place called Happy Valley during the 1930s Depression. Happy Valley was one of three places at La Perouse that came to be known as Depression camps – the other two were Frog Hollow and Hill 60.
The camps were established as a refuge for families impacted by the effects of the Great Depression, which was widely understood to have begun in 1929 and lasted throughout the 1930s. Though each camp had a separate name together they formed an uninterrupted, but sprawling, group of houses and tents – referred to by outsiders as a ’shantytown’.
This term was used as the camps housed working-class families and was mostly made up of the houses they had built from salvaged and found materials. Many houses were make-do and temporary in nature.
This representation of day-to-day camp life on display evokes how camp life has been characterised – as one of survival, hardship, austerity, improvisation and struggle. But the memories of Happy Valley residents themselves recall the strong friendships, co-operation, and the tight community bonds formed in tough times, along with the triumph of diverse cultural communities existing side-by-side at a time when the Nation’s migration policy mainly sought to keep Australia’s society ‘white’ and ‘British’ in its ethos.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
One Family's Happy Valley Experience
– A daughter’s memory
When researching this exhibition, we were contacted by Jenny Baird Sutton, whose family spent years in Happy Valley, and some of whose siblings were born there. Their story is moving, and inspiring.
My Dad used to say: “Never, ever feel embarrassed or feel ashamed for being out of work. If you want to work, and you’re willing to work, hold your head up high and be proud of yourself”.
My three elder siblings were born in Happy Valley. My mother Alice May Clifton (born 1910) was English and came to Australia in 1920. Mum started working as a maid when she was 12, in Newcastle. My father was Charles Sutton (born 1894) and served in WW1. He then joined the merchant navy; while at sea there was an explosion in the boiler room and he was badly burnt. The closest port was Newcastle, where he was admitted to hospital. A friend of mother who was a nurse up there, introduced them in hospital, and they got married in Newcastle Cathedral.
In 1931, my parents moved to Sydney during a time where there was no work. They were told there was work in Sydney but there was nothing. Dad met a bloke in the pub who sold him a Happy Valley shack for ten pounds.
They packed their few belongings and caught the tram to La Perouse and arrived in the dark. There was no electricity or water or sanitation in Happy Valley; there was nothing but the shacks. They stumbled around in the dark, knocking on doors for directions until they found the shack.
When they found it, mum cried. It was a hovel; it was falling apart. It was originally a tent, and was made of galvanised iron, and bits of wood. The first thing they did was try to fill the billy and make the tea, but that was a bit of disaster. When my mother went inside; she found a bed made of four pieces of wood with chicken wire, and that night she slept on the wire with an army coat between it. She woke up looking like a tattooed lady. And the other thing she found out was the “indoor sport” of killing fleas; as the shack was swarming with them.
… The times were very hard; there were people who died of malnutrition there. And there was also a University lecturer and his wife who couldn’t cope with the lower living standards, and they committed suicide. For many Happy Valley was a last resort and many people simply couldn’t manage..
It was absolutely terrible, people had nothing and nowhere to go. But my mum said; in retrospect, even though times were hard, it was the happiest time of her life. At Happy Valley, she had freedom, to make friends and talk to other women, and swim in the beautiful waters of La Perouse.
Jenny Baird Sutton, March 2020. (excerpts)
One Family's Happy Valley Experience
– A daughter’s memory
When researching this exhibition, we were contacted by Jenny Baird Sutton, whose family spent years in Happy Valley, and some of whose siblings were born there. Their story is moving, and inspiring.
My Dad used to say: “Never, ever feel embarrassed or feel ashamed for being out of work. If you want to work, and you’re willing to work, hold your head up high and be proud of yourself”.
My three elder siblings were born in Happy Valley. My mother Alice May Clifton (born 1910) was English and came to Australia in 1920. Mum started working as a maid when she was 12, in Newcastle. My father was Charles Sutton (born 1894) and served in WW1. He then joined the merchant navy; while at sea there was an explosion in the boiler room and he was badly burnt. The closest port was Newcastle, where he was admitted to hospital. A friend of mother who was a nurse up there, introduced them in hospital, and they got married in Newcastle Cathedral.
In 1931, my parents moved to Sydney during a time where there was no work. They were told there was work in Sydney but there was nothing. Dad met a bloke in the pub who sold him a Happy Valley shack for ten pounds.
They packed their few belongings and caught the tram to La Perouse and arrived in the dark. There was no electricity or water or sanitation in Happy Valley; there was nothing but the shacks. They stumbled around in the dark, knocking on doors for directions until they found the shack.
When they found it, mum cried. It was a hovel; it was falling apart. It was originally a tent, and was made of galvanised iron, and bits of wood. The first thing they did was try to fill the billy and make the tea, but that was a bit of disaster. When my mother went inside; she found a bed made of four pieces of wood with chicken wire, and that night she slept on the wire with an army coat between it. She woke up looking like a tattooed lady. And the other thing she found out was the “indoor sport” of killing fleas; as the shack was swarming with them.
… The times were very hard; there were people who died of malnutrition there. And there was also a University lecturer and his wife who couldn’t cope with the lower living standards, and they committed suicide. For many Happy Valley was a last resort and many people simply couldn’t manage..
It was absolutely terrible, people had nothing and nowhere to go. But my mum said; in retrospect, even though times were hard, it was the happiest time of her life. At Happy Valley, she had freedom, to make friends and talk to other women, and swim in the beautiful waters of La Perouse.
Jenny Baird Sutton, March 2020. (excerpts)
La Perouse Museum is located on ‘The Loop’ at La Perouse within the Kamay Botany Bay National Park’s northern headland. The museum is housed within the historic Cable Station building, once Australia’s only link to New Zealand and the rest of the world.
Address: 1542 Anzac Parade, La Perouse NSW 2036
La Perouse Museum is located on ‘The Loop’ at La Perouse within the Kamay Botany Bay National Park’s northern headland. The museum is housed within the historic Cable Station building, once Australia’s only link to New Zealand and the rest of the world.
Address: 1542 Anzac Parade, La Perouse NSW 2036
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
The Rise of the Great Depression
The Great Depression was ushered in with the ‘crash’ of the United States stock market – known as the Wall Street Crash – in October 1929. Its impact swept the globe including to Australia and lasted for the whole of the 1930s.
Australia was among the countries worst affected by the 1929 Crash. By 1932 almost 1 in 3 Australians were out of work. Labouring or working-class workers were the worst off, as their characteristic hand-to-mouth way of life meant they did not have savings to fall back on when hard times hit.
Widespread homelessness and even destitution resulted, as workers could not pay their mortgage or rent. Tens of thousands of unemployed men travelled widely to find work, many of whom travelled to Sydney where work was only slightly less scarce than regional areas.
The temporary camps to which many unemployed and their families turned in the 1930s emerged across the country. Being the Nation’s largest capital city, Sydney had the greatest number of Depression camps, with many situated south of the main harbour on vacant land that was Government-owned. The Happy Valley camp, however, was located on private land owned by the NSW Golf Club.
In addition to the camps here at La Perouse, other nearby camps were at Brighton-le-Sands, Rockdale and Long Bay.
Depression-era kitchen tea urn c.1930s
Cast iron
La Perouse Museum Collection.
Depression-era kitchen tea urn c.1930s
Cast iron
La Perouse Museum Collection.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All plastic fragments were collected from Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach & Coogee Beach.
All plastic fragments were collected from Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach & Coogee Beach.
City to Surf
Washed Up Plastic / 2019
City to Surf
Washed Up Plastic / 2019
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
An unidentified man and child at Happy Valley, c.1932
Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald Collection.
An unidentified man and child at Happy Valley, c.1932
Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald Collection.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Doing the washing in a Yarra Bay house c.1935
Courtesy John Cann Collection.
Doing the washing in a Yarra Bay house c.1935
Courtesy John Cann Collection.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Children at Happy Valley, c.1932
Healthy, happy toddlers, captured by a visiting photographer, are posed in front of a slab-hut at Happy Valley. This was probably for a SHM feature.
Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald Collection.
CURATOR'S NOTE
BEACH COUTURE
Welcome to La Perouse Museum online. On behalf of the Museum and Randwick City Council, we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this area; the Bidjigal and the Gadigal peoples who occupied the Sydney Coast, and we honour their elders past present and emerging.
La Perouse Museum is delighted to host “Beach Couture: A Haute Mess” in our historical Instrument Room in the 1882 Cable Station. Designed by the amazing artist Marina DeBris, these garments both attract and provoke. You can see high moments in art and fashion history from the Rococo to the Gothic to Carnaby Street in this collection; there’s a clever combination of aesthetics and conservationism. There’s even a reference to the great French explorer Lapérouse himself.
We hope you enjoy this amazing and thought-provoking collection; every piece of each garment has been thrown away carelessly. Haute Mess is truly beautiful food for thought.
CURATOR'S NOTE
BEACH COUTURE
Welcome to La Perouse Museum online. On behalf of the Museum and Randwick City Council, we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this area; the Bidjigal and the Gadigal peoples who occupied the Sydney Coast, and we honour their elders past present and emerging.
La Perouse Museum is delighted to host “Beach Couture: A Haute Mess” in our historical Instrument Room in the 1882 Cable Station. Designed by the amazing artist Marina DeBris, these garments both attract and provoke. You can see high moments in art and fashion history from the Rococo to the Gothic to Carnaby Street in this collection; there’s a clever combination of aesthetics and conservationism. There’s even a reference to the great French explorer Lapérouse himself.
We hope you enjoy this amazing and thought-provoking collection; every piece of each garment has been thrown away carelessly. Haute Mess is truly beautiful food for thought.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
CURATOR'S NOTE
HAPPY VALLEY : LA PEROUSE IN THE DEPRESSION
Happy Valley: La Perouse in the Depression is a complex and moving exhibition looking at the emergence of the three unemployment camps around La Perouse from the early 1930s. This show looks at the choices, memories, hardships and memorabilia saved from this important era in Australia’s history.
Some stories and objects have been brought together for the first time. Keep an eye out for treasures such as the muck metal brooches made by Happy Valley resident Mr Kimble, the iron bed head from the Coast Hospital that made up a Happy Valley fence, and the clay hut brilliant recreated by Dr Peter Mckenzie from the La Pa Aboriginal community.
As you explore the show, you’ll see common themes of resilience, isolation, social cohesion, bigotry… and also the conquering of the human spirit. We hope Happy Valley not only opens up the past for you, but also connects to what is going on in the world today.
CURATOR'S NOTE
HAPPY VALLEY : LA PEROUSE IN THE DEPRESSION
Happy Valley: La Perouse in the Depression is a complex and moving exhibition looking at the emergence of the three unemployment camps around La Perouse from the early 1930s. This show looks at the choices, memories, hardships and memorabilia saved from this important era in Australia’s history.
Some stories and objects have been brought together for the first time. Keep an eye out for treasures such as the muck metal brooches made by Happy Valley resident Mr Kimble, the iron bed head from the Coast Hospital that made up a Happy Valley fence, and the clay hut brilliant recreated by Dr Peter Mckenzie from the La Pa Aboriginal community.
As you explore the show, you’ll see common themes of resilience, isolation, social cohesion, bigotry… and also the conquering of the human spirit. We hope Happy Valley not only opens up the past for you, but also connects to what is going on in the world today.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Not So Happy
– Facing eviction at Happy Valley
From the mid-1930s onwards, economic conditions began to improve. New opportunities for work saw some families leave the La Perouse Depression camps. The Happy Valley camp’s location on private land owned by the NSW Golf Club also created problems.
By the end of the 1930s the Club had grown tired of unemployed families living on their land and took action to evict those who remained. This sparked a battle between the Club, Randwick Council, the State Government and Happy Valley residents.
The first eviction notices were issued by Randwick Council in mid-1938. The State Government, however, responded by stalling some of these – reprieve was offered to married couples with one or more children, whereas married couples with no children and all single men were given a month’s notice to leave the camp. Residents at Happy Valley resisted the 1938 evictions, arguing they had nowhere else to go.
With further eviction notices issued in 1939 single men argued that they were no more able to find alternative shelter than married couples and families. In March 1939 the police, along with contract labourers, were brought in to remove the last families protesting their eviction. The State Government made offers of transport and cash advances as an incentive to move, and some families were re-homed in public housing.
But despite the assistance offered many saw the evictions as simply wrong. In one instance during the evictions, contractors employed to pull down houses walked off the job. In another, a woman declared to the evicting officers that:
‘[m]y husband was a Digger [sic] and now I'm to be thrown out on to the road too.’
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
After the Depression
– Dr Peter McKenzie’s Story
Though the Happy Valley Depression camp ceased to exist following the 1939 evictions, the Frog Hollow and Hill 60 camp, along with the La Perouse Aboriginal Mission, continued to house non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal families. The post-WWII era also saw new families from Eastern Europe arrive at Frog Hollow and Hill 60. A member of the La Perouse Aboriginal community, Dr Peter McKenzie recalls life at La Perouse’s and the Frog Hollow camp in the years after the Depression. For Peter, camp life in these decades remained one of struggle, as it did for many other families.
I just looked over at the little La Perouse Boomerang I bought in Walcha and was reminded of my childhood at La Perouse, we lived in many tin shacks around the mission and it wasn't until I was about eleven that Mum, Davy and me moved onto the mission to live with Aunty Olly, we moved out of the little blue ten foot square dirt floor shack we lived in on the hill that Uncle Bob built. Mum and the old man finally split after her and him had battled it out for about twelve years. …
Living with Aunty Olly was like a step up to luxury even if we did not have electricity. The house had an outside shithouse and a single cold water tap on the verandah. There was no such thing as a kitchen sink or bathroom and our kitchen fuel stove ran on wood and coal. The house had three rooms, you entered into the 'kitchen' and two rooms went off at either end.
At least it didn't leak and it was a bit warmer than the shacks… The kitchen had a dresser, a table and chairs, a cupboard (a 'safe') a fuel stove with an oven, it also had a top loading ice chest. We used a kero lamp at night or candles. The house was one of the houses built on the 'new' mission of 1928, after the old tin shack mission was revoked and the new mission gazetted to the new site. …
A Shared But Different Experience?
While Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal families who lived side-by-side at Happy Valley had shared experiences during the Depression, many Aboriginal people faced additional struggles given they were subject to the authority of the Aborigines Protection Board.
Like other working-class families, Aboriginal families moved from the country to Sydney during the Depression to look for work. Aboriginal people, however, found that they were less likely to find work than ‘white’ workers; and with more and more Aboriginal people out of work they became more ‘visible’. This fuelled the stereotype that Aboriginal people are lazy or bad workers, which in turn hardened the Protection Board’s stance on their segregation from wider society. This thinking led to the introduction of the 1936 Aborigines Protection Act which gave the Protection Board the power to order Aboriginal families onto its sanctioned reserves.
Only Aboriginal families living on the Protection Board’s reserves were entitled to the food rations it doled out. At La Perouse and Happy Valley, the Protection Board also attempted to prevent Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal families having contact with one another – a key reason being the concern that their intermingling resulted in the birth of so-called ‘half-caste’ children.
Born at the La Perouse Mission, but when a Happy Valley resident in the 1930s, the emerging Aboriginal community leader Mrs Pearl Gibbs witnessed first-hand how, in cooperation with the Police, the Protection Board acted to prevent contact between families from La Perouse Mission and Happy Valley. This experience influenced her later involvement with many political organisations, including the NSW Aborigines Progressive Association and the NSW Aborigines Advancement League.
Pearl also participated in the Day of Mourning protest held on 26 January 1938 where, alongside other Aboriginal activists, she made the following statement:
We Aboriginal women are intelligent enough to ask for the same citizenship rights and conditions of life as our white sisters. Those of my race who understand our economic conditions have not a great faith in what the white man promises to do for us. We know that we must carry on the fight ourselves.
Facing greater discrimination during the Depression, Aboriginal families from La Perouse Mission and Happy Valley also banded together to resist racism, and this included by making a living independent of the Protection Board. This included continuing the practices of making shell souvenirs, boomerang throwing and other cultural skills, as well as holding a snake show for La Perouse’s constant flow of tourists and sightseers.
A Shared But Different Experience?
While Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal families who lived side-by-side at Happy Valley had shared experiences during the Depression, many Aboriginal people faced additional struggles given they were subject to the authority of the Aborigines Protection Board.
Like other working-class families, Aboriginal families moved from the country to Sydney during the Depression to look for work. Aboriginal people, however, found that they were less likely to find work than ‘white’ workers; and with more and more Aboriginal people out of work they became more ‘visible’. This fuelled the stereotype that Aboriginal people are lazy or bad workers, which in turn hardened the Protection Board’s stance on their segregation from wider society. This thinking led to the introduction of the 1936 Aborigines Protection Act which gave the Protection Board the power to order Aboriginal families onto its sanctioned reserves.
Only Aboriginal families living on the Protection Board’s reserves were entitled to the food rations it doled out. At La Perouse and Happy Valley, the Protection Board also attempted to prevent Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal families having contact with one another – a key reason being the concern that their intermingling resulted in the birth of so-called ‘half-caste’ children.
Born at the La Perouse Mission, but when a Happy Valley resident in the 1930s, the emerging Aboriginal community leader Mrs Pearl Gibbs witnessed first-hand how, in cooperation with the Police, the Protection Board acted to prevent contact between families from La Perouse Mission and Happy Valley. This experience influenced her later involvement with many political organisations, including the NSW Aborigines Progressive Association and the NSW Aborigines Advancement League.
Pearl also participated in the Day of Mourning protest held on 26 January 1938 where, alongside other Aboriginal activists, she made the following statement:
We Aboriginal women are intelligent enough to ask for the same citizenship rights and conditions of life as our white sisters. Those of my race who understand our economic conditions have not a great faith in what the white man promises to do for us. We know that we must carry on the fight ourselves.
Facing greater discrimination during the Depression, Aboriginal families from La Perouse Mission and Happy Valley also banded together to resist racism, and this included by making a living independent of the Protection Board. This included continuing the practices of making shell souvenirs, boomerang throwing and other cultural skills, as well as holding a snake show for La Perouse’s constant flow of tourists and sightseers.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Shantytown Living - Tom Galvin's Story
Extract taken from Wendy Lowenstein, Weevils in the Flour, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1978.
We came out here to Happy Valley in 1930. Just picked a spot and put up a shack twenty by ten [feet]. It had a sand floor with bags over it. We had a Primus stove and an open fire outside. We boiled our washing over the fire. There were all sorts of people, labourers, shop assistants, clerks. They couldn't get a job, they couldn't pay rent.
Morale was reasonably good. I was miserable at first, but I became accustomed to it, to being without money. We got the dole, [and] food tickets, of course. … We didn't need many clothes, especially in the summer.
We formed a committee and became very closely knit. … We had a general meeting once a month, and any time that members wanted a meeting for a specific purpose. … The committee was elected by the community and we'd have discussions on improving the camp.
Local fishermen would give us a hand-out, especially when they got salmon, because their chances of selling it at market were next to nil. Get tuppence a pound for it. We might help pull in the nets. The Chinese market gardens up the road could only sell their top production, and their cheaper grades they gave to us. We gave it out according to the numbers in families.
The Dairy Farmers' Co-operative donated sixteen gallons of milk a day to the camp. The Tramways Board gave us passes to get it. There was no rubbish or sanitary collection. We used to burn our rubbish. People dug a hole like a cat and put four poles and bags around it.
We had a big canvas marquee donated by Samuel Walder and Co. Walder was Lord Mayor of Sydney at the time. And we used to have dances here. An Aboriginal chap used to come over and entertain us with a snake dance. The tent was our social centre.
Shantytown Living - Tom Galvin's Story
Extract taken from Wendy Lowenstein, Weevils in the Flour, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1978.
We came out here to Happy Valley in 1930. Just picked a spot and put up a shack twenty by ten [feet]. It had a sand floor with bags over it. We had a Primus stove and an open fire outside. We boiled our washing over the fire. There were all sorts of people, labourers, shop assistants, clerks. They couldn't get a job, they couldn't pay rent.
Morale was reasonably good. I was miserable at first, but I became accustomed to it, to being without money. We got the dole, [and] food tickets, of course. … We didn't need many clothes, especially in the summer.
We formed a committee and became very closely knit. … We had a general meeting once a month, and any time that members wanted a meeting for a specific purpose. … The committee was elected by the community and we'd have discussions on improving the camp.
Local fishermen would give us a hand-out, especially when they got salmon, because their chances of selling it at market were next to nil. Get tuppence a pound for it. We might help pull in the nets. The Chinese market gardens up the road could only sell their top production, and their cheaper grades they gave to us. We gave it out according to the numbers in families.
The Dairy Farmers' Co-operative donated sixteen gallons of milk a day to the camp. The Tramways Board gave us passes to get it. There was no rubbish or sanitary collection. We used to burn our rubbish. People dug a hole like a cat and put four poles and bags around it.
We had a big canvas marquee donated by Samuel Walder and Co. Walder was Lord Mayor of Sydney at the time. And we used to have dances here. An Aboriginal chap used to come over and entertain us with a snake dance. The tent was our social centre.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Daily Life at Happy Valley
Happy Valley was the largest of the three Depression camps located near La Perouse. Situated on the sandy slopes above Congwong Beach, it was somewhat protected from the southerly winds that charged across Botany Bay. When greatest in size, the camp contained approximately 130 residences, housing 330 people.
When arriving at the camp most families had only the possessions they could carry. They set up their homes in tents or ‘shacks’.
Built by Happy Valley families these were typically made from scavenged scraps of wood, corrugated iron, hessian or flourbags, and even cardboard. The hessian or flourbags were used to form ‘bag’ walls, sometimes painted with a mixture of lime and animal fat to make them weatherproof. Floors were either dirt or covered with flour bags.
Many items of furniture were cobbled together from salvaged materials.
When out of work, residents lived on small government payments and other ‘hand-outs’, provided by public authorities or through charity. Some families described their life as being ‘on the bum’ – a phrase from an American folk song about Depression-life for the working class.
The camp had no electricity, and water had to be fetched and carried in buckets often made from old kerosene tins. Cooking was done on fuel stoves or wood fires. For most, daily life was spent meeting the most basic living needs – including preparing meals from what could be afforded or cadged, as well as patching and mending old or second-hand clothes.
Work and money were scarce, so any expenditure made was extremely prudent; many children and women went without shoes. But despite the hardships and prejudices faced by residents, a spirit of perseverance and helping each other grew and prevailed at the camp. Residents too lobbied hard to gain outside assistance for resident families, as well as against the harsh judgements they were dealt throughout this decade.
Daily Life at Happy Valley
Happy Valley was the largest of the three Depression camps located near La Perouse. Situated on the sandy slopes above Congwong Beach, it was somewhat protected from the southerly winds that charged across Botany Bay. When greatest in size, the camp contained approximately 130 residences, housing 330 people.
When arriving at the camp most families had only the possessions they could carry. They set up their homes in tents or ‘shacks’.
Built by Happy Valley families these were typically made from scavenged scraps of wood, corrugated iron, hessian or flourbags, and even cardboard. The hessian or flourbags were used to form ‘bag’ walls, sometimes painted with a mixture of lime and animal fat to make them weatherproof. Floors were either dirt or covered with flour bags.
Many items of furniture were cobbled together from salvaged materials.
When out of work, residents lived on small government payments and other ‘hand-outs’, provided by public authorities or through charity. Some families described their life as being ‘on the bum’ – a phrase from an American folk song about Depression-life for the working class.
The camp had no electricity, and water had to be fetched and carried in buckets often made from old kerosene tins. Cooking was done on fuel stoves or wood fires. For most, daily life was spent meeting the most basic living needs – including preparing meals from what could be afforded or cadged, as well as patching and mending old or second-hand clothes.
Work and money were scarce, so any expenditure made was extremely prudent; many children and women went without shoes. But despite the hardships and prejudices faced by residents, a spirit of perseverance and helping each other grew and prevailed at the camp. Residents too lobbied hard to gain outside assistance for resident families, as well as against the harsh judgements they were dealt throughout this decade.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Being Poor and Facing Poverty
Well before the Great Depression began, a common view was held that poverty was a ‘natural’ condition of labouring-class people. For the middle and upper classes, poverty was seen to foster a range of social problems, such as idleness, dependency, promiscuity and disease. The Australian experience also reflected these biased ideas.
Like scientific racism, this thinking persisted into the twentieth century and influenced the way labouring families were viewed or talked about during, and when remembering, the Depression. It is interesting to contrast the memories of Happy Valley residents with others who did not live at the camp, and who viewed the residents’ way of life from a position of material and privilege.
Bob Tasker was four when his father, an unemployed shearer, shifted his family from Gilgandra, in the Central West of NSW, to Sydney to find other work. They arrived at Happy Valley in 1930 and moved into one of its cobbled-together homes.
If you wanted to build a place, you were welcome to stay. Everyone was in the same boat. …There were lots of families there. You made up your own games like rounders and drop-the-hanky. And there were plenty of places to hide because the homes were all so close together.
In contrast, the wife of a doctor who ministered health to families at Happy Valley recalled a different picture of the Happy Valley camp.
The conditions they lived in at Happy Valley were appalling. Old bits of tin and cardboard. The majority of them were so dejected and so unhappy. My husband went out to see some poor little kiddie out there and when he came back he was just covered from head to toe in tiny little fleas!
Being Poor and Facing Poverty
Well before the Great Depression began, a common view was held that poverty was a ‘natural’ condition of labouring-class people. For the middle and upper classes, poverty was seen to foster a range of social problems, such as idleness, dependency, promiscuity and disease. The Australian experience also reflected these biased ideas.
Like scientific racism, this thinking persisted into the twentieth century and influenced the way labouring families were viewed or talked about during, and when remembering, the Depression. It is interesting to contrast the memories of Happy Valley residents with others who did not live at the camp, and who viewed the residents’ way of life from a position of material and privilege.
Bob Tasker was four when his father, an unemployed shearer, shifted his family from Gilgandra, in the Central West of NSW, to Sydney to find other work. They arrived at Happy Valley in 1930 and moved into one of its cobbled-together homes.
If you wanted to build a place, you were welcome to stay. Everyone was in the same boat. …There were lots of families there. You made up your own games like rounders and drop-the-hanky. And there were plenty of places to hide because the homes were all so close together.
In contrast, the wife of a doctor who ministered health to families at Happy Valley recalled a different picture of the Happy Valley camp.
The conditions they lived in at Happy Valley were appalling. Old bits of tin and cardboard. The majority of them were so dejected and so unhappy. My husband went out to see some poor little kiddie out there and when he came back he was just covered from head to toe in tiny little fleas!
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939
Photograph series courtesy,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Collection and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Happy Valley and the La Perouse Aboriginal Mission
The Happy Valley camp was situated near the La Perouse Mission – a settlement where a group of Aboriginal families established permanently in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This growing settlement at La Perouse reflected the resolve of these families to survive the effects of colonial oppression on their traditional Country.
From the early 1880s, the Aboriginal settlement at La Perouse – called the ‘black’s camp’ at this time – came under official scrutiny. This decade began a long period in which the NSW government gained power to assert its authority over the daily life of the colony’s entire Aboriginal population. First came the appointment of an Aborigines Protector (1881) and then the establishment of the Aborigines Protection Board (1883) – to administer the regulations and legislation that followed.
Despite the Bidjigal peoples’ pre-British custodianship of the area, the La Perouse Mission was gazetted as an ‘Aborigines Reserve’ by the newly formed Aborigines Protection Board. In Sydney, the Protection Board exercised its authority over Aboriginal people by moving individuals and families from other locations in the city to the La Perouse reserve. This intended to remove them from ‘white’ society, and to a place where they could be watched and given ‘civilising’ influences.
The NSW government sought influence over the Aboriginal families living at La Perouse by building basic huts, providing rations of flour, tea and tobacco etc., as well as encouraging missionaries to minister Christianity to them. From the 1890s missionaries visited the reserve – and so in turn it was called a ‘Mission’.
The locating of the Happy Valley camp alongside the La Perouse Mission in the Depression years resulted in the mixing and co-operating of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal families. Relationships, marriages and children resulted from this shared experience.
For some Aboriginal families too life in the Happy Valley camp was inviting, as here they could avoid the influence of the Aborigines Protection Board’s authority.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
The Rise of the Great Depression
The Great Depression was ushered in with the ‘crash’ of the United States stock market – known as the Wall Street Crash – in October 1929. Its impact swept the globe including to Australia and lasted for the whole of the 1930s.
Australia was among the countries worst affected by the 1929 Crash. By 1932 almost 1 in 3 Australians were out of work. Labouring or working-class workers were the worst off, as their characteristic hand-to-mouth way of life meant they did not have savings to fall back on when hard times hit.
Widespread homelessness and even destitution resulted, as workers could not pay their mortgage or rent. Tens of thousands of unemployed men travelled widely to find work, many of whom travelled to Sydney where work was only slightly less scarce than regional areas.
The temporary camps to which many unemployed and their families turned in the 1930s emerged across the country. Being the Nation’s largest capital city, Sydney had the greatest number of Depression camps, with many situated south of the main harbour on vacant land that was Government-owned. The Happy Valley camp, however, was located on private land owned by the NSW Golf Club.
In addition to the camps here at La Perouse, other nearby camps were at Brighton-le-Sands, Rockdale and Long Bay.
After the Depression
– Dr Peter McKenzie’s Story
Though the Happy Valley Depression camp ceased to exist following the 1939 evictions, the Frog Hollow and Hill 60 camp, along with the La Perouse Aboriginal Mission, continued to house non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal families. The post-WWII era also saw new families from Eastern Europe arrive at Frog Hollow and Hill 60. A member of the La Perouse Aboriginal community, Dr Peter McKenzie recalls life at La Perouse’s and the Frog Hollow camp in the years after the Depression. For Peter, camp life in these decades remained one of struggle, as it did for many other families.
I just looked over at the little La Perouse Boomerang I bought in Walcha and was reminded of my childhood at La Perouse, we lived in many tin shacks around the mission and it wasn't until I was about eleven that Mum, Davy and me moved onto the mission to live with Aunty Olly, we moved out of the little blue ten foot square dirt floor shack we lived in on the hill that Uncle Bob built. Mum and the old man finally split after her and him had battled it out for about twelve years. …
Living with Aunty Olly was like a step up to luxury even if we did not have electricity. The house had an outside shithouse and a single cold water tap on the verandah. There was no such thing as a kitchen sink or bathroom and our kitchen fuel stove ran on wood and coal. The house had three rooms, you entered into the 'kitchen' and two rooms went off at either end.
At least it didn't leak and it was a bit warmer than the shacks… The kitchen had a dresser, a table and chairs, a cupboard (a 'safe') a fuel stove with an oven, it also had a top loading ice chest. We used a kero lamp at night or candles. The house was one of the houses built on the 'new' mission of 1928, after the old tin shack mission was revoked and the new mission gazetted to the new site. …
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Burned “La Perouse” boomerang art Shellwork boomerang
La Perouse artists (date unknown)
Wood and fabric, shells, animal glue, cardboard
The skilled Aboriginal artists of La Perouse began these art traditions in the late 19th century, and which evolved into a successful tourism trade iconic to this area. This was a critical form of income especially during the Great Depression.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
An iron bed-head from the former Coast Hospital.
c.1920s – 1930s.
Cast iron
This corroded bed head was salvaged during the Depression and re-used as a house fence for one of the shanties built overlooking Congwong Beach. (You can see a Happy Valley fence made up of bed heads in the photo to its left, and also in the photograph of the Sutton family on the opposite wall).
The Coast Hospital was located nearby the Happy Valley camp. The bed-head was found during the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Happy Valley clean-up in 1995.
Collection of La Perouse Museum.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Why La Perouse
From the start of the British colonisation of Australia in the late eighteenth century to recent decades, the La Perouse area – including Botany Bay and the Kamay Kurnell Peninsula – was viewed by Europeans to be a ‘wild place’. This perception led to its use to accommodate the city’s so-called outcasts.
At first Aboriginal families from Sydney and the NSW South Coast established permanently at La Perouse – including some who’s traditional Country this area is. When the Great Depression hit, working-class families of Anglo-Celtic backgrounds also arrived here, along with other European-origin families who migrated to Australia during the inter-war (and later, the post-WWII) era.
The relative isolation of La Perouse made it a more ‘acceptable’ place to house unemployed men and their families, and particularly to those not empathetic to people of non-Anglo-Celtic, or working-class, backgrounds.
Scientific racism and the British class system, brought to Australia and advanced by colonial authorities, underpinned the prejudices that shaped these prejudiced views. There were, however, some who were sympathetic to the struggles faced by the residents of the La Perouse camps and gave both material and moral support to them throughout the decade of the Depression.
From a practical perspective, the foreshores of Botany Bay were ideal places for Depression-era living and by poor families as these areas:
…possessed many natural features conducive to cheap, temporary residence: the sea could be used for bathing; the scrubby coastal health afforded good shelter for huts; streams and springs provided access to a fresh water supply; and there were fish in the Bay. (Maria Nugent, Botany Bay: Where Histories Meet, Allen & Unwin, 2005)
For some of these families too they wanted to be isolated and away from the constant gaze of those that judged their poverty and way of life.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
'We were poor but happy ...'
– The Depression camps at La Perouse
This exhibition is a glimpse at the life of a community of people who lived at a place called Happy Valley during the 1930s Depression. Happy Valley was one of three places at La Perouse that came to be known as Depression camps – the other two were Frog Hollow and Hill 60.
The camps were established as a refuge for families impacted by the effects of the Great Depression, which was widely understood to have begun in 1929 and lasted throughout the 1930s. Though each camp had a separate name together they formed an uninterrupted, but sprawling, group of houses and tents – referred to by outsiders as a ’shantytown’.
This term was used as the camps housed working-class families and was mostly made up of the houses they had built from salvaged and found materials. Many houses were make-do and temporary in nature.
This representation of day-to-day camp life on display evokes how camp life has been characterised – as one of survival, hardship, austerity, improvisation and struggle. But the memories of Happy Valley residents themselves recall the strong friendships, co-operation, and the tight community bonds formed in tough times, along with the triumph of diverse cultural communities existing side-by-side at a time when the Nation’s migration policy mainly sought to keep Australia’s society ‘white’ and ‘British’ in its ethos.
Children at Happy Valley, c.1932
Healthy, happy toddlers, captured by a visiting photographer, are posed in front of a slab-hut at Happy Valley. This was probably for a SHM feature.
Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald Collection.
Not So Happy
– Facing eviction at Happy Valley
From the mid-1930s onwards, economic conditions began to improve. New opportunities for work saw some families leave the La Perouse Depression camps. The Happy Valley camp’s location on private land owned by the NSW Golf Club also created problems.
By the end of the 1930s the Club had grown tired of unemployed families living on their land and took action to evict those who remained. This sparked a battle between the Club, Randwick Council, the State Government and Happy Valley residents.
The first eviction notices were issued by Randwick Council in mid-1938. The State Government, however, responded by stalling some of these – reprieve was offered to married couples with one or more children, whereas married couples with no children and all single men were given a month’s notice to leave the camp. Residents at Happy Valley resisted the 1938 evictions, arguing they had nowhere else to go.
With further eviction notices issued in 1939 single men argued that they were no more able to find alternative shelter than married couples and families. In March 1939 the police, along with contract labourers, were brought in to remove the last families protesting their eviction. The State Government made offers of transport and cash advances as an incentive to move, and some families were re-homed in public housing.
But despite the assistance offered many saw the evictions as simply wrong. In one instance during the evictions, contractors employed to pull down houses walked off the job. In another, a woman declared to the evicting officers that:
‘[m]y husband was a Digger [sic] and now I'm to be thrown out on to the road too.’
Happy Valley and the La Perouse Aboriginal Mission
The Happy Valley camp was situated near the La Perouse Mission – a settlement where a group of Aboriginal families established permanently in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This growing settlement at La Perouse reflected the resolve of these families to survive the effects of colonial oppression on their traditional Country.
From the early 1880s, the Aboriginal settlement at La Perouse – called the ‘black’s camp’ at this time – came under official scrutiny. This decade began a long period in which the NSW government gained power to assert its authority over the daily life of the colony’s entire Aboriginal population. First came the appointment of an Aborigines Protector (1881) and then the establishment of the Aborigines Protection Board (1883) – to administer the regulations and legislation that followed.
Despite the Bidjigal peoples’ pre-British custodianship of the area, the La Perouse Mission was gazetted as an ‘Aborigines Reserve’ by the newly formed Aborigines Protection Board. In Sydney, the Protection Board exercised its authority over Aboriginal people by moving individuals and families from other locations in the city to the La Perouse reserve. This intended to remove them from ‘white’ society, and to a place where they could be watched and given ‘civilising’ influences.
The NSW government sought influence over the Aboriginal families living at La Perouse by building basic huts, providing rations of flour, tea and tobacco etc., as well as encouraging missionaries to minister Christianity to them. From the 1890s missionaries visited the reserve – and so in turn it was called a ‘Mission’.
The locating of the Happy Valley camp alongside the La Perouse Mission in the Depression years resulted in the mixing and co-operating of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal families. Relationships, marriages and children resulted from this shared experience.
For some Aboriginal families too life in the Happy Valley camp was inviting, as here they could avoid the influence of the Aborigines Protection Board’s authority.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Children at Happy Valley, c.1932
Healthy, happy toddlers, captured by a visiting photographer, are posed in front of a slab-hut at Happy Valley. This was probably for a SHM feature.
Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald Collection.
A woman tends her garden at Happy Valley c.1939
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and Courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
A woman tends her garden at Happy Valley c.1939
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Courtesy Mitchell Kibrary, State Library of New South Wales Collection and COurtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Common Wealth
Washed up materials (2020)
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Common Wealth
Washed up materials (2020)
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
All flags were found on Coogee Beach, NSW. Most items found after Australia Day.
Crustacea
Washed up plastic bags & plastics (2013)
The plastic bags were collected from a beach in Los Angeles, CA.
Crustacea
Washed up plastic bags & plastics (2013)
The plastic bags were collected from a beach in Los Angeles, CA.
The plastic bags were collected from a beach in Los Angeles, CA.
The plastic bags were collected from a beach in Los Angeles, CA.
Invasive Species
Washed up materials (2020)
All materials, fishing gear, were found on Coogee Beach & Gordon's Bay, NSW.
Invasive Species
Washed up materials (2020)
All materials, fishing gear, were found on Coogee Beach & Gordon's Bay, NSW.
All materials, fishing gear, were found on Coogee Beach & Gordon's Bay, NSW.
All materials, fishing gear, were found on Coogee Beach & Gordon's Bay, NSW.
The Ones That Got Away
Washed up aluminium cans & plastic bottles (2019)
Commisioned by TOMRA Australia to highlight the need for a circular economy. All bottles and cans were found on Coogee Beach & Gordon's Bay, NSW.
The Ones That Got Away
Washed up aluminium cans & plastic bottles (2019)
Commisioned by TOMRA Australia to highlight the need for a circular economy. All bottles and cans were found on Coogee Beach & Gordon's Bay, NSW.
Commisioned by TOMRA Australia to highlight the need for a circular economy. All bottles and cans were found on Cooge Beach & Gordon's Bay, NSW.
Commisioned by TOMRA Australia to highlight the need for a circular economy. All bottles and cans were found on Cooge Beach & Gordon's Bay, NSW.