Heritage Portable Iron Houses in South Melbourne, Australia.
The three houses in South Melbourne are among the last nineteenth-century prefabricated iron buildings. With gold discovered in Victoria in 1851 accommodation was needed for the many migrants flocking to the colony. Iron houses met that need. Ordered from a catalogue, the buildings offered ranged from modest cottages to theatres and even churches that could hold over 700 people. Constructed in Britain, the houses were dismantled, every component labelled then packed into crates and shipped abroad to be reassembled in their new location.
Jayne Hunt, Australia