The Goorawin Shelter: Ed Oribin's contribution to the Aboriginal Housing Panel

In 1976, a Yolngu councillor Dick Bandalil wrote a letter in English to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in Canberra, requesting housing for his Wulkabimirri Community in Arnhem Land: "Dear Ian Viner. How are you there. I hope you, you getting fine and happy, and also Michael Heppell too. I am very well here Wulkabirrimi, so I want Goorawin shelter”. Dick Bandalil went on to ask the Federal Minister to provide, "as soon as possible”, six Goorawin shelters. Two Goorawin shelters, supplied by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Panel (ATSIHP) had already been erected in Ramingining, and Dick Bandalil evidently saw a need for more. The Goorawin shelters were a prefabricated, single-skin plywood-clad structure designed by Cairns architect Edwin Oribin and commissioned by the ATSIHP director Michael Heppell. By 1978, Minister Viner and Heppell were in dispute when the Federal Government brought the ATSIHP to an abrupt end. Established in 1972 by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, the reputation and architectural legacy of the Panel and its Aboriginal housing projects are mixed. Despite trenchant criticism of ATSIHP projects including the Goorawin (often in reports commissioned by the Panel), Dick Bandalil's letter to the minister suggests a counter narrative. The Goorawin was an unorthodox assembly of lightweight steel frame and plywood panels, part of a series of Oribin's geometric experiments in prefabricated housing. This paper examines Oribin's little-known architectural contribution to the Panel though correspondence, drawings and reports. It places the Goorawin shelter and its variants in the broader activities of the Panel and asks questions about the intentions and reception of Oribin's designs in an inchoate but fertile period of housing design for Indigenous Australians.