Looking Back history feature: Slacky Flat’s unemployed village

Humpies like this were dotted around Slacky Flat from the depression years of the 1930s [Note: This image is not at Bulli]. THE depression years of the 1930s resulted in over 100 adults and children developing a makeshift village on the area now known as Slacky Flat at Bulli.

The village, sometime called ‘Happy Valley’ consisted of shacks made from mainly corregated iron springing up where the Bulli trotting track is today.

Owned by the Bulli Colliery at the time, the únemployed were in the majority moved-on in the late 1930s and 1940s after a large parcel of the land was sold to Bulli Shire Council for recreation purposes. Despite this, some of the campers moved into the bushland foothills of the escarpment, just west of the flat. There some remained for many years after.

As a boy I remember there were two or three men still living in corrugated…