The Australian War Memorial Collection. Test site
A woman rinses her hair and conducts her morning ablutions using a bucket of water amongst bricks, timber and scattered rubbish on a vacant block of land in central Phnom Penh. She is being observed by a group of labourers (left) who have paused for a morning cigarette break from the building they are constructing on a vacant block of land while a fellow worker (far left) continues laying bricks. A towel lies at the woman's feet and to her right is a dilapidated French colonial building (depicted in P03258.434) which has been occupied by squatters. She, like many thousands of others, has become one of Cambodia's landless poor who have been forced to squat in poverty on whatever land or buildings they find available, having returned under the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)'s Repatriation Component after years of exile in the Thai border camps to discover their former homes were already 'owned' and occupied. Many other families have been displaced by fighting, landmines and rural poverty and are drawn to the city where the prospect of jobs appears brighter, swelling the city's population from 615,000 in 1990 to 1.3 million by 1993 and further compounding an already spiralling housing crisis.
A Khmer mother appears to be contemplating her future as she sits on the wooden steps of her makeshift home while her son eats a meal with a large metal spoon. They are living behind a group of dilapi
The rear of a pair of dilapidated apartment blocks located just off Phnom Penh's Lenin Boulevard which are home to hundreds of squatters living in rudimentary conditions. Children play in the squalid,
Geese feed in front of a family who are squatting on vacant land at the rear of a group of dilapidated apartment blocks located behind Phnom Penh's Lenin Boulevard, which are home to hundreds of squat
Children play in the squalid rubbish-strewn area at the rear of dilapidated apartment blocks located just off Phnom Penh's Lenin Boulevard, home to hundreds of squatters living in rudimentary conditio
A young Khmer girl cares for her baby sibling amongst debris and rubbish in the street behind apartment blocks off Lenin Boulevard in central Phnom Penh. Thousands of landless families squat in povert
The point where Phnom Penh's ferry terminal and riverside markets stop and its squatter settlements and houseboats begin is marked by a line of wicker baskets used for carrying produce. These settleme
