A Living Heritage

Founded in the same year as the National Trust, 1945, the Protection League is considered one of the oldest organisations campaigning for the protection and conservation of the cultural heritage of the remote shack communities.

Cultural heritage is the connections between people and place. In our communities, this heritage goes back over generations and projects into the future with the passing on of the history, knowledge and practices of shack life.

The shack communities today number hundreds of families across a wide range of backgrounds with the involvement of some families reaching back over five generations.

The people have a strong attachment to place and to maintaining:

  • Values of self-regulation, self-reliance, low technology/alternative technology living

  • Assistance to the public through the three Surf Life Saving Clubs in the Royal National Park (two of which would not exist without the shack communities)

  • Contributing to the environmental protection of the Royal National Park through Landcare and Fireguard.

 
 

PROTECTION LEAGUE RECIPIENT OF NATIONAL TRUST AWARD

At the National Trust Heritage Award ceremony on 15th May 2014, the RNPCC Protection League was the recipient of a Heritage Award in the Category Advocacy Campaigns.

This award recognises the Protection League's long fight since 1945 to save the shack communities at Little Garie, Era and Burning Palms. Firstly the Protection League lobbied save the land from development in 1950, then to save the shacks from demolition in the 1990s and finally to have them listed on the State Heritage Register in 2012.

 

The Protection League is the organization representing shackholders at Burning Palms, Era and Little Garie and this website refers to these three communities.  (The Bulgo community has its own organization, the Bulgo Protection League).

The shacks were built in the first half of the twentieth century, many during the depression. They were built by private citizens using their own initiative, resources and labour. None of the communities is accessible by road. All materials were carried down steep bush tracks or around the shoreline.

There were once such shacks up and down the NSW Coast, however most have now gone, swallowed up by coastal development.

The RNP Shacks are the largest remaining group of coastal shacks in Australia. Their heritage significance has been recognised with their listing on the State Heritage Register in 2012 and previously by the National Trust, the Australian Heritage Commission and Wollongong City Council.