My grandfather built a shack at Coalcliff in the 1930s – he was a train-driver and never out of work throughout the Depression. Three generations of our family used the shack over the next 30 years. Not sure how many “shacks” there were, but it would have been several dozen.
Ours was timber-frame with fibro walls and a tin roof – windows were just a part of each wall you pushed out and propped open with a stick.
We spent five weeks there every summer – with the last being 1966-67 – the council decided that they were all to be demolished, and the land to revert to a reserve. Despite a legal challenge by shack owners, the decision could not be overturned.
The shacks were close to each other, built in a higgledy-piggledy way all over the hillside, with formed paths and steps connecting them all to the beach, and back to the car-park near Main Street. You couldn’t drive to them at all, so you had to walk in all your stuff – a couple of hundred metres from memory.
The shacks had no electricity, water, or sanitation. We used the public toilets and showers down at the modest clubhouse near the beach. We had an ice-chest, and my father had to lug a big lump of ice in a hessian bag right along the beach every week – possibly twice a week. We later got a kerosene fridge and thought it was wonderful.
We had a Coleman pressure lamp, some other wick-based kerosene lamps, and cooked on Primus kerosene stoves. It was all very basic, but we loved it. We played lots of cards, chess, and Monopoly each night – under the glow of the hissing Coleman lamp.
Through the 1960s (at least) when the mine was still operating, the lagoon was stained black, and so was the surf quite frequently. Lots of lumps of rounded coal washed up on the beach.
The ocean rock-pool was our home, as was the large rock-shelf, where we all learnt to fish – garfish were plentiful, and my father was a master at catching them.
I loved it from infancy until I was 15 – indelible memories.
Hi Ian,
I was about 3 or 4 when my family stayed in one of the shacks at Coalcliff in the early 1950s. My grandfather also worked on the railway so we could rent a shack for almost nothing. All our coastal holidays involved travel on steam trains. My older brother learnt to swim in the rockpool. It was very basic inside and I recall hessian was used on the window openings.
My grandfather built a shack at Coalcliff in the 1930s – he was a train-driver and never out of work throughout the Depression. Three generations of our family used the shack over the next 30 years. Not sure how many “shacks” there were, but it would have been several dozen.
Ours was timber-frame with fibro walls and a tin roof – windows were just a part of each wall you pushed out and propped open with a stick.
We spent five weeks there every summer – with the last being 1966-67 – the council decided that they were all to be demolished, and the land to revert to a reserve. Despite a legal challenge by shack owners, the decision could not be overturned.
The shacks were close to each other, built in a higgledy-piggledy way all over the hillside, with formed paths and steps connecting them all to the beach, and back to the car-park near Main Street. You couldn’t drive to them at all, so you had to walk in all your stuff – a couple of hundred metres from memory.
The shacks had no electricity, water, or sanitation. We used the public toilets and showers down at the modest clubhouse near the beach. We had an ice-chest, and my father had to lug a big lump of ice in a hessian bag right along the beach every week – possibly twice a week. We later got a kerosene fridge and thought it was wonderful.
We had a Coleman pressure lamp, some other wick-based kerosene lamps, and cooked on Primus kerosene stoves. It was all very basic, but we loved it. We played lots of cards, chess, and Monopoly each night – under the glow of the hissing Coleman lamp.
Through the 1960s (at least) when the mine was still operating, the lagoon was stained black, and so was the surf quite frequently. Lots of lumps of rounded coal washed up on the beach.
The ocean rock-pool was our home, as was the large rock-shelf, where we all learnt to fish – garfish were plentiful, and my father was a master at catching them.
I loved it from infancy until I was 15 – indelible memories.
Hi Ian,
I was about 3 or 4 when my family stayed in one of the shacks at Coalcliff in the early 1950s. My grandfather also worked on the railway so we could rent a shack for almost nothing. All our coastal holidays involved travel on steam trains. My older brother learnt to swim in the rockpool. It was very basic inside and I recall hessian was used on the window openings.