ABSTRACT
This chapter locates second homes amid the discourses of architecture, the vernacular and cultural heritage. The Australian beach shack is a site through which the process of transformation of the social, natural and built fabric of the Australian coast can be examined. The discussion is framed around the material and cultural resonance of the shack and shack-life, or the makeshift, and the seemingly wholescale transformation of Australia's coastal commons through "elite landscaping", or the makeover. This makeover, while dismissive of the shack in one sense, also reinvents the shack as a representation of cultural life, reinstated with a symbolic, vernacular and aesthetic appeal that was never part of the stark functionality of its original form. Following the shack as it becomes Australian vernacular architecture and cultural heritage informs the way in which shack material and imaginaries are reinvested in new, yet vastly altered, ways into the cultural and coastal landscape.
