Household Analysis: Site Layout and Building Design

Abstract

This chapter analyzes building design and use of yard spaces over the different household occupations through time. The evidence suggests that the Knight & Shenton store building was built partly as a status symbol and enlarged to keep a strong public show of status. The occupation by a homeland dependency elite was brief and was marked by practical damage control measures after a severe cyclone rather than taking the opportunity to replace the aging timber structure. The last two occupations were by Japanese primary producers after the site was brought by a Japanese merchant and pearling master. Buying into the elite heart of Cossack and taking over the main retail outlet 6 years after the “White Australia Policy” effectively made such actions illegal was more than a business move by this Japanese entrepreneur. It was an expression of domination in the power vacuum left by the movement of the pearling fleet to Broome, and it was an expression of resistance to a series of anti-Asian policies aimed at keeping the Asian work force in laboring positions.