How to make a Grass Hut

The making of a grass hut, a project that took 7 days to complete…

Primitive Technology explains:

“I built this grass hut up on a ridge. It’s roughly parallel with the tiled hut and wattle and daub hut that are a couple of hundred meters away down in a valley. I built it on a ridge to get away from mosquitoes in wet weather. I looked for a spot and cleared it on the first day, built the frame on the second, and spent the next 5 collecting grass. The type of grass is Guinea grass, an introduced species here in Australia meant for live stock. This grass is difficult to collect in this dry forest and I had to climb further into the mountain to get it.
The design is a simple pointed dome that’s easy to build. The tools used were simply sharp stones and a digging stick. It’s 2.5 m wide and 2 m tall. 8 lawyer cane strips were driven into the ground to form the ribs of the structure and hoops of cane were put over this to attach the grass to. Vine was used to tie the frame together and to tie handfuls of long grass to it. When the hut was almost finished a cap was made and lifted onto the top of the dome to finish it.”