Three miners outside their tent accommodation at Moonta; a sign over the entrance to the tent describes it as 'Moonta Villa'.

The first dwellings in South Australia consisted of tents, rush huts and huts made out of bush timber, crude wattle and daub structures with earth floors and some prefabricated buildings.

Most of the early settlers found themselves in an unfamiliar and 'hostile' environment where trees were too tough to cut properly, bugs and rot attacked cut timber. Insufficient prefabricated dwellings had arrived, there was no lime for mortar and brickfields and quarries were not yet in operation. Cottage tents and prefabricated buildings were the norm for some time, particularly during major influxes of immigrants.

Cheap hastily improvised shelter provided by canvas tents and indigenous inspired shelters made from long sheets of bark drooped over a central pole, propped up on forked branches provided some shelter but were inadequate for long term use.

Prefabricated buildings consisted of small well made wooden houses built in section in England and packed especially for export, known as 'portable colonial cottages', more commonly known as 'Manning houses' for the London carpenter who designed them. In spite of the recommendation for the purchase of these buildings, they did come under criticism for being expensive to import from England, and for becoming oppressively hot in the South Australian summer.

Tents -- South Australia -- Moonta.

Pioneers -- South Australia -- Moonta.

State Library of South Australia: Mortlock Wing. From the ground up August 2004-