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demountable


noun a school building consisting of one or two classrooms which can be removed from its foundations and relocated. Compare musset hut, portable, pre-fab, relocatable, silver bullet1, terrapin unit, transportable.

Contributor's comments: This term is also commonly used in WA.

Contributor's comments: [Brisbane informant] "Demountable" is not restricted to school classrooms, but is any temporary building, eg. on a mine site.

Contributor's comments: I went to many schools on the North Coast [NSW] which had demountables or portables. Many southern people had no idea what we meant, as all of their class rooms were inside tall brick buildings with internal heating !

Contributor's comments: 'Transportable' was more widely used than 'demountable' for classrooms, at least when I went to school in the 1980s in the South West W.A. Permanent classrooms normally had numbers, ie Room 1, Room 2, Room 3, etc. Transportables were referred to as T1, T2, T3, etc.

Contributor's comments: Hmmm ... when I went to school (not THAT long ago), demountables weren't cyclone proof. We weren't impressed - another Southern conspiracy!

Contributor's comments: freezing cold, or blazing hot, pre-fab portable (& supposedly temporary) classrooms used by NSW Dept of Education throughout NSW.

Contributor's comments: In Darwin after cyclone Tracy many people lived in demountables, which were positioned either side of flattened elevated houses.