Primitive Camping in Australia | Building a Bark Shelter

The traditional Australian gunya, or humpit, was a form of shelter that our indigenous used here, mainly as something that could be constructed quickly and temporarily as they moved into a location to harvest food. The shelters were usually small for one or two people to sleep in and gave them great protection from the rain and wind. Due to our indigenous having a very special relationship with the land and a wealth of knowledge, they knew what materials worked best for this type of shelter. Down in the south where I'm from, people from the Kulin Nation would use the bark from different trees, and mostly malaluka was used. Large sheets of bark would be laid on each other and create a perfect, quick and easy, yet strong and effective material to protect you from the elements. The gunya shelter was so effective that European settlers would often copy this type of construction when needing a temporary shelter out bush. I would create this type of gunya shelter near the bushland on our property and see how it holds up. I aim to use the natural resources around me to make something that would protect me from the cold winter elements. I'll also cook up some native food and I'll spend a night out in my shelter sleeping by the fire to show you that this kind of setup is all you really need to get by when out bush. G'day everyone, so in today's video I'm going to build a little gunya shelter, so a traditional indigenous bark shelter. And yeah it's just a nice little area here, we've got a dam by the back bushland. I've got my bark hut down there as well and I thought this is a nice flat spot to kind of build a little shelter that I can sleep out in and it'd just be really nice. So I'm going to start gathering all the resources and bringing it here, but the first thing is to build the frame, so I've got to get my materials for that. So I built a little teepee here one time with the kids and we camped out in it. We hadn't used it for a long time and I wanted to pull it down because I wanted to shift this gunya shelter to the other side of this dam, but I've got all the resources here ready to go that I already collected from the bush. Got a lot of eucalyptus branches that I can use for the frame of this shelter. So depending on the location where they were living, our indigenous folk, they built gunya shelters in a variety of different ways. A common way down south was actually using like Malaluka saplings that were quite bendable and they'd make more of like a dome type structure, like if you think of a dome tent and then layer that with Malaluka bark. I've seen so many different variations of the gunya shelter. I've seen like more of a lean-to type frame where they just lay, you know, bark sheets on one side. I've seen the dome structure. I've also seen like wigwam type style of gunya shelter where branches, you know, eucalyptus branches stacked against each other in a teepee type of way. They've used bark, they've used spinifex grass. Up in the north they've used palm fronds, things like that. So for this particular shelter, I think I'm going to go with the whole like kind of a wigwam type style. I've got eucalyptus branches so they're not going to bend to make a dome. So I'm going to make more of a, yeah, you can call it an A-frame in a sense and then I'm going to be using stringy bark to layer on there and it should still be pretty waterproof. So I'm going to get the frame going now. And I've got this kangaroo lever here and I'm going to see if I can use this to tie the top of this gunya shelter together. Now to secure the edges, I read that they used multiple things. Sometimes they they used rocks and they'd make like a semi-circle of rocks and then that's how they'd support the legs. But they often had a digging stick which is just like a hard piece of hard wood that was carved to have a spike on the end, so act like a digging stick. I'm going to use the crowbar which is kind of really a modern day... yeah, yeah, well you can't handle him. So I'm using a crowbar which is a modern day digging stick meant to be able to be whipped up quite quickly. It's a temporary shelter so it's not like you're building something, you know, very permanent and stable. It's something that when they moved into an area to do some hunting they could whip this up in a day or half a day and, you know, they wouldn't sleep many people in there, maybe one or two. So I'm just gonna lie down. Plenty of room, plenty of cover for me to lie here and have a little fire here. So the next part is to waterproof this now that I've got the frame going and I'm going to go use some sheets of stringy bark for that. I previously harvested a bunch of stringy bark sheets for another project I had going on. All this bark was taken from our property and this does not harm the tree. I use this for a bark hut but will be taking it off now to use on this gunya shelter. Now before I chuck this bark on I just wanted to give you a little bit of Australian history, specifically Victorian history. This is history I'm interested in being part of the CFA but it's also pretty interesting. So you might have heard of Ash Wednesday. 1983, one of our worst fires here in Victoria. I think it was something like 40 or was it 47 people died I think at the fires and it just burnt down hectares and hectares of land here in Victoria. One of the main fires started just up the road from here and it swept actually through our property and we've still got a few tree-like stumps that were from trees that burned down on that day. Now I've looked into it and spoke to the neighbours and we're pretty sure that the charred bark here is probably from Ash Wednesday. Yeah which is really really interesting that it stayed that long. So yeah still little reminders of our history and those fires many many years ago and so it's cool to use this bark that has that history implanted onto it. One and the old whole idea for this actually I might do like that that's better just to keep it from uh all falling down. Now this is a whole bunch of um dried lamandra. Lamandra is a native to Australia and so I'm going to use this as insulation for bedding in here. So uh this is definitely something that uh indigenous folk would have used in fact they often wove mats together to lie on so I'm just going to lay it out there as as padding as like a insulation bedding and I'll sleep on that and that should be perfectly fine. Pretty good really good. That was really cool there was a little flame robin just chilling out on here. Now I'm not going to sleep here tonight because I've got something on tonight um maybe in a few nights time I'll come down here I wouldn't mind sleeping here in the rain to see how it goes but what I'm going to do is I'm going to collect a bunch of firewood and just stack it so it's ready for that night and the idea is I want to get a couple of really uh thick longer logs so that I can have a fire going all night next to me because I'm not going to sleep with a sleeping bag or anything like that so I'm going to just sort that out now and have that all ready. Put that there to hold it down. I've got some dry firewood ready for there so I'll come back later uh in a few days time and do a little camp out here and maybe do some kind of a um traditional cook up on the on the coals as well. G'day everyone what I want to do is want to get a fire going and I'm going to have a cook up and for this fire I want to do a primitive fire starting method which will be the bow drill. From what I hear the our indigenous didn't use the bow drill to create fire in Australia they did use the hand drill. I've never been able to get fire started with the hand drill I'd like to give it a go one time but I have gotten fire with the bow drill. Now it is winter there's a lot of moisture in the air it's very cold let's see if I can actually do this if not I'll just go to a ferro rod but hopefully I should be able to get a fire going so I'm going to do some prep to get this all ready. So this here is stringy bark same bark I used for here and basically I'm gonna just make a bird's nest out of it so I've already created the little board which I'm going to use to create fire. Now this is from a cypress, cypress is not a native Australian wood it is been introduced but it's a beautiful soft wood to use for a bow drill same as the spindle cypress but my bow is actually eucalyptus and then for basically the bearing block I'll be using the Swagmans Companion by Arran and Blades. Usually you could use a stone with a little dip a little dimple in it as a bearing block traditionally give it a bit of a spin there there's an ember I've just found it a bit okay that's pretty good I might have lost that so what happened there was my bird's nest is not it wasn't catching so I'm going to do that again really going to try and build up some embers this time though just goes to show how many factors there are in trying to do the bow but basically I've created a whole bunch of uh what do we call it ash and if that catches I should have a lot there let's see pretty rough at the moment finally all right I let that catch that's a good ember now if this doesn't catch I'm giving up oh finally geez that took way too long oh well we got there in the end we got there in the end that's a good fire going now the aim for tonight is to just sleep here on this uh bedding and I'll probably shift the fire this way have a is this sheepskin bedroll this is from Peak Oil Company in Victoria and I bought this and it's yeah so you know the indigenous folk would have had in the winter possum possum coats I don't have a possum coat so I'm going to be using a sheepskin to lay over me and then just lay next to the fire and see if that keeps me warm I think it's going to get down to like five degrees tonight so it'll be a very fresh one all right for dinner I wanted to cook up some uh native food so I've got here this is a silver perch silver perch is a native perch to our waterways down here in Victoria now this perch is actually it's 25 centimeters so the legal limit in the wild is 30 centimeters so it's a little bit under but I got caught this this morning from our dam now we've stocked them we've got about a hundred in our dam so as far as I can tell legally from the rules if it's from your own dam um yeah you can take them out but what I'm going to do is I'm just going to cook this straight on the coals and eat it uh cook it that way and that's how you know the indigenous folk would have done that so yeah it's a bit of a bush tucker meal tonight what you want to do is get some of these coals here just going to chuck of flesh on this it's a good tasting fish so you can see that white flesh and as always whenever I get a fish fish eyes bloody beautiful don't let anyone tell you otherwise before it gets too dark to see I'll show you how I'm gonna lie so got my water I'm gonna have a long fire like this I'm just trying to get the fire to spread out because I want a nice long one I'll basically lie here with the sheepskin on me and that's how I'll be sleeping tonight before it gets too dark I'm gonna load up my wood pile so one pile of thick wood here and then another pile of thinner wood there and the whole idea is that I don't have to actually get up and walk to load up the fire I can just get up reach over and chuck one on so I'm gonna do that that should be enough wood to get me through bush with no proper sleeping gear a bit of a rough one but you know you'd fall asleep to the fire and feel nice and warm and doze off and then you'd wake up feeling cold because the fire's gone down you build it up again and then you know fall back to sleep and probably do that about 10 times so I feel actually pretty good and yeah I went through all my firewood um so I had just enough which I'm glad I had that all prepared but it wasn't too cold last night maybe six degrees or something like that so because there was a lot of cloud cover we didn't get that you know real kind of frosty frosty winter night so it was actually pretty nice it was pretty pretty cruisy uh I found this insulation worked really good to keep the the cold of the ground off me uh just got pretty uncomfortable after a while uh pretty hard sheepskin blanket was really good as well you know just took the edge off definitely needed to still pair it with a fire you can see how the indigenous folk would just get used to this lifestyle you know I'm doing it one night and then I'm back in my warm bed so it takes a while to adjust and get used to it but it's very possible to live like this and and sleep like this um your body would adapt and get used to it but in the winter having that little fire next to you is very much uh very important it's been a good tester because uh I'm gonna be heading out for a bit of a survival challenge in the high country where it's going to be down into the minuses and so you know this was just a little bit of a taster so that'll be a real test and uh taking out this sheepskin blanket as well and look I would lastly just recommend if you've never slept by a fire you know like this just on the ground next to the fire with just a blanket or something like that I would highly recommend it because that's what our ancestors have done for thousands of years modern beds and things like that that was a privilege of the wealthy uh you know 300 400 500 years ago and just a woolen blanket and laying by the fire there's something about it that connects you to yeah tradition and history past and how people used to do it so I'd recommend it if you've never done it before otherwise I hope you've enjoyed this video please subscribe to the channel give me a like and a comment and I will be seeing you on the next one I think I'm gonna head back home to modern conveniences and luxuries and have a warm shower and a nice coffee have a good one everyone