Shipping Containers as Homes?

It's not every day you get to eat dinner in a big steel box on the edge of the harbour. There are seven of us. Three on the couch, another on the floor with his plate on his knees, two more guests on chairs and one child in the bedroom out the back. It's rather intimate but high on novelty value. There's wine and lemonade all round as we celebrate my first night in an 11.8m x 2.35m x 2.6m shipping container.

It had arrived 10 hours earlier on the back of a truck. "Where d'ya want it?" the driver asked as he jumped down from his cab.

We chose a quiet corner of Rozelle Bay next to the Liquidity restaurant and only metres from the luxury motor yachts moored in the marina. The driver pushed the buttons on a remote control unit and hydraulic arms at each end of the truck raised the four-tonne steel box, swung it outwards and lowered it gently onto the bitumen.
​
A 1000-litre waste-water tank was attached to the rear of the structure. Electricity cables were snapped into place and the steel shutters covering the windows raised. Someone handed me a front-door key and wished me luck. Thirty minutes after its arrival, the shipping container home was ready.