In his photographic essay, Shack Life - Tasmanian Shacks and Shack Culture (first published 2003), Matthew Newton in his opening paragraph said, “Tasmanian shacks and the people who frequent them are the perfect symbol for Tasmania itself. Shack culture is ingenious, warm, colourful, peripheral, eccentric, often rough, sometimes funny and occasionally brilliant. It is a way of life that has all but disappeared for the majority of Australians.” 

The same observations can be said for the fast disappearing Queensland Beach Shack. 

When Jeff first arrived on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland in the late 1970’s as an advance party for the future Sea Changers, much of Noosa Heads and its nearby coastal villages were dotted with understated weekend shanties that were living statements of a way of life. Places by the beach that eschewed the oppression of suburban life and offered escape to another lifestyle that is the dream of all Australians. A way of life that is now under threat by new standardised national building codes and planning schemes that can regulate and force building designs into predicable forms with colour schemes and materials controlled in a way never before imagined. 

Jeff continues to draw inspiration from the ingenious use of shack materials of the past. Lightweight materials were often the choice. Abandoned corrugated iron, disassembled plywood crates and old timber palings make way for colorbond, eco-ply and timber battens.