page_title: Dugout (shelter)
section_title: Australia
hierarchical_section_title: Dugout (shelter) / Asia and the Pacific / Australia
caption_attribution_description: English: Aboriginal dugout, Tinnenburra Station, south of Cunnamulla, Queensland. Original title: "Blacks' Dugout, Tinnenburra."
context_page_description: A dugout or dug-out, also known as a pit-house or earth lodge, is a shelter for humans or domesticated animals and livestock based on a hole or depression dug into the ground. Dugouts can be fully recessed into the earth, with a flat roof covered by ground, or dug into a hillside. They can also be semi-recessed, with a constructed wood or sod roof standing out.
  These structures are one of the most ancient types of human housing known to archaeologists, and the same methods have evolved into modern "earth shelter" technology.
  Dugouts may also be temporary shelters constructed as an aid to specific activities, e.g., concealment and protection during warfare or shelter while hunting.
context_section_description: Burra in South Australia's Mid-North region was the site of the famous 'Monster Mine' (copper) and home to 4,400 people in 1851, 1,800 of whom were living in dugouts in the Burra Creek. Census data from 1851 shows that nearly 80 percent of the workers living in the dugouts were miners, with probably the majority being Cornish. Floods and the Victorian gold rush effectively ended the large scale use of dugouts in Burra, but people were still being 'washed' out of the creek in 1859.
  Coober Pedy is a small outback town in northern South Australia, 846 kilometres north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway, where opal mining is the dominant industry. Most residents live in caves excavated into the hillsides to avoid the harsh summer temperatures and work underground in mine shafts. White Cliffs, New South Wales is similar, in terms of climate, housing, and mining operations.
caption: An Indigenous Australian dugout near Cunnamulla, Queensland around 1910
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