"There are no clocks or TVs and mobile phone won’t
work. The point of Don Hearn’s Cabins is to provide a space where
you can just stop."
A little over sixty years back, a World War II vet who’d
fought the Nazis in Africa and the imperialist Japanese in New
Guinea came back to Australia and built half-a-dozen
cabins on pristine almost-beachfront land on NSW’s South
Coast.
After years of being soaked in the blood of other men in the
desert and the jungle, Don Hearns returned an avowed pacifist, what
would be called, in the American sense, a liberal. He used whatever materials he could find to build the
modest cabins on four acres of crown land at Cunjurong
Point.
Australian surfers who wanted to avoid the Vietnam draft hid
away at Don Hearn’s cabins and ol Donny showed his pacifist colours
when he sent a dead Blue-Ringed octopus to the prime minister in
protest at Australia’s involvement in the war.
Over the ensuing years, Don Hearn’s cabins became a popular
holiday destination not just for surfers, but families who didn’t
want to be slugged five hundred or a thousand bucks a night for
some dressed-up, characterless house down a back street.
Don Hearn’s cabins has a compelling sell.
This is a different kind of place – it suits some people and
definitely does not suit others. We provide a place where you can
reconnect with yourself, your partner, family, friends, your dog
(yes your pet is welcome) and nature itself.
How long is it since you lit a campfire, sat around it to
share tall tales and gazed awestruck at the Milky Way?
There are only six cabins on four acres so there are plenty
of quiet places to stretch out your hammock between the
trees.
The cabins are not self contained but when you get the key
to your cabin, it also opens your own bathroom in the amenities
block so you are not sharing with everyone else – you just need to
bring a torch so you can get there at night.
There are no clocks, radios or TVs and most mobile phone
won’t work. The whole point of Don Hearn’s Cabins is to provide a
space where you can just stop; jump off that rat-wheel of daily
distractions.
Of course, in a country where speculative real
estate, snitching and
rule following are national
pastimes, Don Hearn’s cabins drives the bureaucrats
nuts.
And, so, shortly, Don Hearn’s cabins are gonna be closed after
“issues” were identified with the site.
“Detailed assessments identified issues including the poor
condition of the buildings, bushfire risk at the site, sewerage
infrastructure problems and presence of endangered ecological
communities,” a government spokesperson said.
Lexie Myer, who became caretaker in 1991 after Don Hearn’s
death, says the government has kept her on a thirty-day lease for
almost a quarter of a century.
“It will be 22 years trying to run an accommodation business
where people want to book next year but I don’t have more than 30
days’ certainty at any time,” she told ABC, saying that during the
hysteria of COVID she was forced to go to charities for food, “I
didn’t qualify for any assistance…so I had no income for almost 18
months.”
Close the joint and, says Myer, and “I’ll be homeless,
unemployed, with a three-legged dog and 70 years old… I thought I’d
be here for the whole rest of my life and be carried out in a
box.”
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etc.
