[2] During the Great Depression of the 1930s (and also possibly from an earlier date), the site was visited and then occupied by Melbourne's poor and homeless who scavenged for scrap and rags from the tips, and built humpies out of discarded rubbish such as old timber and corrugated iron, even lino and hessian sacking.

[2] Despite regular raids by the police and possibly Harbour Trust officers, who attempted to move people out and demolish their huts, the area continued to be occupied at least up until World War II.

[7] A little later council resolved to instruct the town clerk (Mr. H. S. Wootton) to discuss the matter with the Lands Department with a view ... to serve notices to quit on the Inhabitants, and to house them in charitable homes.

[8] According to Council files, the settlement was abandoned in the early 1940s, because the nearby tips no longer held a living for scavengers after waste recovery schemes had been initiated to assist in the war effort.

These works included: Reference in literature or quotes from literary figures relating to Dudley Flats are also common in the second half of the twentieth century: In 2006, Sharon Thorn completed a PhD thesis on the artistic possibilities in fringe life.

[21] In 2018, Griffin Press (Scribe Publications) launched a combined social history, psychogeographic contemplation and biography of three specific residents of the Dudley Flats shanty town, Blue Lake, researched and written by David Sornig.