Housing

Simple shelters covered with overlapping sheets of paperbark. Northern Territory.

With much of Australia having a mild climate, people often slept in the open, warmth and comfort provided by the campfire, and often people kept warm by sleeping between two small fires. The dingo, as a camp dog, also slept beside people providing warmth.
Aboriginal housing mostly consisted of simple shelters made from a framework of straight branches, then covered with leafy branches or sheets of bark.

Larger, more elaborate shelter made from frame of branches, covered with bark. Northern Territory.
The covering depended on locally available materials at the time. In some areas sheets of soft paperbark, easily pulled from trees, were available. In other areas stiffer sheets of thick stringy-bark were cut from trees, but if these were unavailable, then bushes and leafy branches were used.
In the tropical north, where a richer environment allowed people to camp in the one area for longer, more elaborate structures were built, sometimes elevated platforms with a fire below designed to make smoke and repel mosquitos.
One type of simple bark shelter consisted of bending or folding a length of bark and burying the ends into the ground to fix them.

Simple shelter made from bent over stringy-bark. Northern Territory.

In wet and cold conditions, closed dome-shaped shelters were made, commencing with a framework of sticks bent over and meeting in the centre. These were between one to two metres (three to six feet) high and this framework was covered with available materials – sheets of bark when available, but in desert regions, layers of spinifex grass, twigs and leaves.


All of the previously used information about aboriginal culture was extracted from:
http://www.aboriginalculture.com.au/index.shtml