Bush carpentry is an expression used in Australia and New Zealand that refers to improvised methods of building or repair, using available materials and an ad hoc design, usually in a pioneering or rural context.

[4] In his Bushcraft series Ron Edwards describes hut and furniture building, and 'stockcamp architecture', without once using the phrase 'bush carpentry', though 'rough and ready' recurs.

1] Cox and Lucas, writing in 1978 of Australian pioneer buildings, remarked: "... perhaps because it has been the symbol of hardship and country toil; perhaps because it was thought too crude and rude to be treated seriously as architecture by the academics ... there have been few books and articles written on the subject ...

The tradition of Australian inventiveness, however, has an extensive literature: "... vigorous attitudes to innovation prevailed in the Colonies in the nineteenth century and established for Australia some significant technological leads.

Lessons from these attitudes both underline the continuing importance of the 'lone inventor' and hold relevance for education, management, and technology policies today.

The shelves are not level and the dishes are brought to a comparatively horizontal position by means of chips and bits of bark, inserted under the lower side.

[12] Thus, in an Australian suburb today, a self-taught handyman might devise and erect a backyard structure using purchased timber, and practising 'bush carpentry'—a gazebo, a fernery, a children's playhouse for example—while at the same time, a skilled tradesperson, in a distant run of an outback cattle station, might be forced to use heavy tree-trunks, saplings, undressed stone and rusty fencing-wire to construct a stock race.[n.

That bloke knows livestock, knows how to work them, can cut a straight line with a saw, handle concrete, build a set of yards, fix a motor car—you name it.

Mann's Emigrant's Guide of 1849 suggests that those heading for Australia's unsettled areas take with them a plentiful supply of a wide variety of tools and fasteners, but he lists as the very minimum, 'A hand saw; Axe; Adze; Mortising chisel; Two augers, 1 and 11/4 inch; Two maul rings;[18] Set of wedges; 1 Spade; Pick-axe; Two-foot rule; Chalk line; Square; A Plumb Bob.

'[19] A majority of early settlers had formerly been manual labourers, or servicemen, and brought with them a sound practical ability and aptitude for 'making do'; others observed or helped and copied their techniques.

[20] Freeland observes: 'With a saw, an axe, a hammer and a spade on his cart and possibly one of the useful little books on construction written especially for him ... he had to do the best he could with the materials that were to hand wherever he stopped.

Helped a little by his book, a fair amount by advice and precedent and a great deal by ingenuity and native wit, the settlers developed a surprising number of variations on standard constructional materials and techniques.

[22] With the upsurge in Australia of the restoration of so-called 'Heritage items', the techniques of Australian bush carpentry may be moving closer to formal identification and categorization.

Tocal College's 2002 list of tools for its 'Traditional bush timber construction' course includes the broadaxe, adze, sledge hammer[23] and wedges, morticing axe, froe and mallet, draw knife, and hand auger.

[25] Historically, the materials at hand for Australian settlers usually included a plentiful supply of hardwood,[26][n. 4] in the form of fully-grown trees and saplings, bark, brush or grass, clay, mud and stone.

[28] The etymology of the word carpenter shows that it derives from 'a carriage maker', and later, 'one who builds frameworks';[29] thus, the term 'bush carpentry' does not necessarily imply that wood is the only material involved.

Because they are made of a material with which everyone has a deep-rooted harmony, because they are put together in ways that are easily understood and because their forms are readily comprehended, they are universal buildings whose roughness and even whose frequent dilapidation give them a powerful emotional appeal and impact.

They are buildings to be felt rather than reasoned ... Cement works, mines, the railways and factories spawned a large variety of store houses and storage bins, towers and poppet heads, workshops and condensers.

[31][32] There is often a sardonic or comical note in Australian fiction when bush carpentry is mentioned or described; possibly because there is no comedy or satire residing in competency.

He split every slab, cut every post and wallplate and rafter himself, with a man to help him at odd times; and after the frame was up, and the bark on the roof, he camped underneath and finished every bit of it – chimney, flooring, doors, windows, and partitions – by himself.

The general result was decidedly picturesque in its irregularity, but dangerous to the mental welfare of any passenger who was foolish enough to try to comprehend the design; for it seemed as though every carpenter had taken the opportunity to work in a little abstract idea of his own.

[34] In Steele Rudd's, Back at Our Selection, (1906) the sequence of stories beginning with "Dave's New House" and ending with "Dad Forgets the Past" have a socio-historical sub-text emphasizing the progress of rural Australia from pioneering to prosperity.

In the first story, Dad Rudd, though now a wealthy farmer, builds Dave and his new wife Lily a house, using materials salvaged from a neighbour's derelict slab hut.

On a block of land close to a beach, near a coastal village, or other place of recreation like a river, lake or mountain, a family might erect a 'shack', or cabin, usually with their own hands, often using materials brought from their city residence, or obtained nearby.

[41][42] Building and Bushwork for Selectors, Squatters, and Others a series of articles by Frederick Harrison, appearing in The Australian Town and Country Journal during June–August 1881.