The early cottages and huts of Australia’s pioneers and settlers have great charm and appeal. Their primitive, at-hand materials - bark and log or corrugated iron roofs, timber slab walls sometimes rendered in clay or lime, and the characteristic ‘standoff’ chimneys, with flues also often constructed in timber and bark - soon gave way to more refined options once they became available, but the basic form - small, rectangular and compact, a central entrance and hall with a room on either side, steep gabled or hipped roofs - survived into the 20th century in both rural and urban contexts, as the workers cottages and miners cottages so popular in inner suburbs today.