The Sleepout

Abstract

Going to bed each night in a sleepout—a converted verandah, balcony or small free-standing structure was, for most of the 20th century, an everyday Australian experience, since homes across the nation whether urban, suburban, or rural, commonly included a space of this kind. The sleepout was a liminal space that was rarely a formal part of a home’s interior, although it was often used as a semi-permanent sleeping quarter. Initially a response to the discomfort experienced during hot weather in 19th century bedrooms and encouraged by the early 20th century enthusiasm for the perceived benefits of sleeping in fresh air, the sleepout became a convenient cover for the inadequate supply of housing in Australian cities and towns and provided a face-saving measure for struggling rural families. Acceptance of this solution to over-crowding was so deep and so widespread that the Commonwealth Government built freestanding sleepouts in the gardens of suburban homes across Australia during the crisis of World War II to house essential war workers. Rather than disappearing at the war’s end, these were sold to homeowners and occupied throughout the acute post-war housing shortage of the 1940s and 1950s, then used into the 1970s as a space for children to play and teenagers to gain some privacy. This paper explores this common feature of Australian 20th century homes, a regional tradition which has not, until recently, been the subject of academic study. Exploring the attitudes, values and policies that led to the sleepout’s introduction, proliferation and disappearance, it explains that despite its ubiquity in the first three-quarters of the 20th century, the sleepout slipped from Australia’s national consciousness during a relatively brief period of housing surplus beginning in the 1970s. As the supply of affordable housing has declined in the 21st century, the free-standing sleepout or studio has re-emerged, housing teenagers of low-income families.