page_title: Outhouse
section_title: Australia
hierarchical_section_title: Outhouse / History / Australia
caption_attribution_description: English: View from above of rows of timber houses with outhouses built by the Queensland Housing Commission in Norman Park, Brisbane, Australia around 1950. The little sheds in each back yard are "outhouses" or "dunnies"
context_page_description: An outhouse is a small structure, separate from a main building, which covers a toilet. This is typically either a pit latrine or a bucket toilet, but other forms of dry toilets may be encountered. The term may also be used to denote the toilet itself, not just the structure.
  Outhouses were in use in cities of developed countries well into the second half of the twentieth century. They are still common in rural areas and also in cities of developing countries. Outhouses that are covering pit latrines in densely populated areas can cause groundwater pollution.
  In some localities and varieties of English, particularly outside North America, the term "outhouse" refers not to a toilet, but to outbuildings in a general sense: sheds, barns, workshops, etc.
context_section_description: "Dunny" or "dunny can" are Australian words for a toilet, particularly an outhouse. For other uses of the word, see Dunny (disambiguation).
  In suburban areas not connected to the sewerage, outhouses were not always built over pits. Instead, these areas utilized a pail closet, where waste was collected into large cans positioned under the toilet seat, to be collected by contractors (or night soil collectors) hired by property owners or the local council. The used cans were replaced with empty, cleaned cans. Brisbane relied on "dunny carts" until the 1950s (one source says until the 1970s); because the population was so dispersed, it was difficult to install sewerage. Tar, creosote, and disinfectant kept the smell down. Academic George Seddon claimed that "the typical Australian back yard in the cities and country towns" had, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, "a dunny against the back fence, so that the pan could be collected from the dunny lane through a trap-door". The person who appeared weekly to empty the buckets beneath the seats was known as the "dunnyman", see gong farmer.
  The "dunny lanes" provided access to collectors. These access lanes can now be worth considerable sums see Ransom strip.
  The Great Australian Dunny Race has become an icon during the Weerama Festival at Werribee.
caption: Norman Park, Queensland, around 1950; like many areas of Brisbane this area was unsewered until the late 1960s, with each house having an outhouse or "dunny" in the back yard. The little sheds in each back yard are outhouses.
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