Darlinghurst Blog: Detritus: Paper Ghosts

Halloween was two weeks ago but these little white paper ghosts were still hanging from a tree outside Novar on Darley Street when I went by the other day. They looked really sweet, swaying in the breeze.

Darlinghurst Blog: Detritus: New Nest

I've built myself a new little online nest and I'd really like to know what you think of it.**

Blogger, which hosts my blog, has been rolling out a series of new designs and updates in a bid to improve the "blogger experience", and I like to think of myself as one of those people that embraces the new, so I thought I'd try one out. 

Of the eight new designs, this "Flipcard" version seems to work the best with the My Darling Darlinghurst blog style. You can try the others using the drop-down menu at the top left of the home page, but the Flipcard is my home style.

I have also returned to a pink colour scheme, because I just can't resist a good shade of that colour and this one is not too bad. 

Unfortunately, they haven't yet updated certain blogger gadgets, which means for the time being there is no chapter section, with easy links to my posts on Heritage Items, Plant Life, Animal Life, Across the Border, Past and Present, Detritus, Retailers, Street Art et al.

Which is a shame as I kind of built this blog around the notion of chapters. I am hoping Blogger adds the gadget functions soon, so I can reinstate that and the A-Z too.

There are a few other areas that Blogger still needs to add and update, but if you haven't already noticed, I won't bore you with those details.

Anyway, last weekend my eagle-eyed friend in the Darlinghurst flatlands, Ruby Molteno, dragged me three blocks along Bourke Street with the promise of seeing "the most amazing little nest" that some street artist had created.
"I'm not going to show you where it is,'' she said.
''All I will say is that it is not too high up and it's really cute."
Well, it didn't take me long to spot it:

"Are you sure that is a piece of art,'' I said to Ruby.

"Or is it just some basket that someone's thrown out the window and it's landed in the tree."

'

"No,'' Ruby assured me.

''Look, it's all intricately woven into the branches; someone has spent a lot of time making this."

Well, whatever the case, it is kind of cute, don't you think?

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And what do you think of the new blog look? Please let me know.

If you hate it, I do hope Blogger lets me revert back to my old style.

**UPDATE: I have reverted back to my old template because there are too many glitches with the new dynamic templates designed by Blogger. Things went missing and then they also removed my links to Twitter, Facebook and the Subscriber form. So until they sort it out I'm sticking with my original design.

Darlinghurst Blog: Plant Life: Bourke Street Cactus

Back in December last year when the City of Sydney council was building its Bourke Street Cycleway, there was a story in the Wentworth Courier about this large cactus, which was planted in a garden bed next to the footpath. 

The Wentworth Courier spoke to an appropriately named resident, Clare Verngreen, who with her green thumb had kept the cactus alive for over a decade. 

But because of the new cycleway garden beds, the City of Sydney council's landscapers had decided the cactus had to go because it posed a risk to passersby. 

At the time, my friend Ruby Molteno took a photograph of the plant and a copy of the Wenty article that had been taped up nearby:

"A large cactus in a Bourke Street garden bed is facing the chop because it does not fit into council planting plans,'' the Wentworth Courier reported. 

"Clare Verngreen, who has been tending the garden outside her Bourke Street home for more than 10 years said she was notified by a project manager on the Sydney Council bicycle path project that her cactus had to go.''

A council spokesperson told the local magazine that the cactus ''posed a safety hazard to people passing by" and had to be removed because the cactus is ''of a large size and protrudes outside the garden bed and unfortunately, replanting is not an option due to the size and the dangerous 20-30mm needles.''

Well, it seems that the council and Gardener Verngreen reached a solution to the problem, because when I was passing by on sunny Sunday, I couldn't help but notice the blooming marvellous cactus, which was weighted down with bright yellow flowers:

The cactus is thriving and is even surrounded by other flowering succulents so that it has actually become a little desert-style garden.

The flowers also look so healthy, as if they are really happy to have been able to remain at their home of 10 years. 

The council has since developed a draft Greening Sydney plan that means we will see more street-side plants being encouraged and also planted, which I think is the most marvellous thing.

If you want to pay a visit to the cactus while it's in bloom, the plant is located just outside 221 Bourke Street. 

Darlinghurst Blog: Reader Story: Sussan's Family Search

Bayswater Road, Kings Cross, 1929 - From the City of Sydney Archives

My Darling Darlinghurst reader, Sussan, wrote this story in the hope that any readers might help her learn more about the circumstances surrounding her mother's birth and adoption. If you have any clues, please email me: violettingle@gmail.com

''Was the Kings Cross Hotel in William St a boarding house in 1924? Does anyone recognise any of the people in this story?,'' Sussan writes.

"I am really after any leads that may help in trying to find out who my mum’s real father might be."

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It was the roaring twenties in Darlinghurst: the Kings Cross Hotel, William Street, September, 1924, to be exact. My mum first entered the world in one of the rented rooms there.

She was born to a young, single, 22-year-old, named Elizabeth Florence Hainer, also known as Flory, I’m told.

In the year she gave birth, Elizabeth was living at the hotel with her mother, Alice Maud Hainer and her younger sister, Rose Lily Hainer.

The sisters were born in Forbes, in central west NSW, where their parents, Alice (nee Halliday) and Jacob William Hainer, had married in 1900.

Jacob was 37 at the time and his new bride just 17. The couple also had two sons: George Frederick (born 1907) and Thomas Joseph (born 1909).

It appears from family stories that Alice and Jacob separated prior to 1924 (Jacob died in Granville in 1940). This is possibly why the three Hainer females lived by themselves in the Kings Cross Hotel at the time my mum was born. There are no records of George or Thomas being there.

Elizabeth’s new daughter - my mother - was given the name Eunice Joan Hainer and we believe she was adopted out shortly after her birth.

Alice and her two daughters appear to have stayed on at the hotel for some time after mum’s birth.

However in 1926, Elizabeth, then 23, married John Guthrie, a 37-year-old tram conductor who lived at 28 Edgeware Road, Enmore.

They married at the Sacred Heart Church, in Darlinghurst, and Elizabeth’s “usual residence” was listed as the Kings Cross Hotel on their marriage certificate.

In 1930, six years after my mother was born, the electoral roll shows that Alice and Rose still lived at the hotel.

But by 1936, the electoral roll for “East Sydney Darlinghurst” shows that Alice, son George, daughters Rose and Elizabeth and her husband, John, were now living at 191 Brougham Street (below), just a couple of streets away from the hotel.

Alice remained in the Darlinghurst area until her death in 1952.

Rose married in 1941 and moved with her new husband to Annandale. She died in 1971 at Newtown, in Sydney's inner-west.

So the years moved by since my mother was adopted out by Elizabeth in 1924, but in 1948 unimaginable tragedy was about to hit her real family.

Based on the electoral rolls it appears that Elizabeth and John Guthrie separated sometime prior to 1943. During this year he was living in Wollongong, south of Sydney, while Elizabeth was in an apartment at 138 Brougham Street (below) with the couple’s three sons (Kevin, Colin and Christopher; my mother, who she adopted out, was her only daughter).

On September 14, 1948, newspapers across the country reported the tragic death of Elizabeth’s husband, John, who was crossing the railways tracks at Wollongong on his 50th birthday when he was hit by a train.

But the year of 1948 became even worse. 

A mere three months after John's horrible death another tragedy occurred.

Elizabeth was back living at 191 Brougham St, with her mother Alice, brother Thomas, his wife Edith and her children.

Elizabeth returned home from work one day and heard someone being violently ill in one of the bedrooms. She rushed to the room and found her 19-year-old son Kevin sitting on the bed in a very bad way. On the dressing table was a soup bowl and a tablespoon that contained Weedicide.

“Why did you take this Kevin?” Elizabeth asked.

He replied: “I am sorry mum, I don’t want to live."

Kevin was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital, but died a short time later. 

He had been suffering from depression since his father’s death, according to the coroner’s report.

One wonders how Elizabeth went on, but she probably did so for the sake of her remaining two boys. She lived until 1971 and died in Liverpool Hospital age 69.

As for my mum, Eunice Joan Hainer (above), she had been adopted by an older couple, Henry William Hines and his second wife Edith (nee Robinson), who had married in 1915.

By the time they adopted my mum they had been married for nine years and Edith was 53 and Henry, 57. Henry had been previously married and four of his eight children had survived to become adults.

They were very old to be adopting a new baby, which is why I sometimes wonder if they were related to the child. My mother was given the new name of Lois Edith Hines.

In 1937, when Lois was just 12, Edith died from a bad heart, and my mother and her adopted father moved into her step-sister’s house at Hurlstone Park, in Sydney's inner-west.

My mum: Eunice Joan Hainer/Lois Edith Hines

In 1941, when mum was 17, her biological mother, Elizabeth, approached her at the knitting mills where she worked.

Elizabeth gave Lois her contact details but my mother became hysterical as she didn’t know she was adopted. She ran home distressed and her family finally told her the truth.

I wonder how Elizabeth found her after 17 years – did she know who her child had been given to?

By that time Lois’s adoptive father, Henry, was suffering from dementia and died on Christmas Day, 1944, in a psychiatric hospital at Rydalmere, in Sydney's northwest.

Mum was only 20 at the time and continued to live at Hurlstone Park with her much older step-sister and her family.

*

At the end of 2006 I started my search for the truth of mum’s real beginnings and uncovered most of what has been told here with my cousin’s help.

Our breakthrough was getting her birth certificate and by chance it confirmed that the child Eunice Joan Hainer had become Lois Edith Hines. No father was listed on her birth certificate.

With these new leads we searched high and low for any remaining family members and through the Ryerson Index  - a database of funeral notices – we found her sole surviving half-brother, Colin. He died in 2006, which was such a shame as mum died in 2007.

Mum (1924 - 2007)

We also found other distant relatives, through ancestry searches, who helped put some of the missing pieces together for us, however, many of them didn’t even know that my mum existed.

I wrote to the funeral home that had conducted Colin’s funeral and they kindly agreed to pass on my contact details to his last known address. Colin’s daughter’s contacted me just before Christmas, 2010, and to my astonishment, said she knew about mum and that Colin had actually met her.

My cousin and I were in total shock.

Apparently, some time in the 1970’s a policeman friend of Colin’s helped track mum down. They found out where we lived and even drove past our home in Fairfield, in Sydney's west, a few times.

On one of these occasions mum was going out the gate and Colin followed her. He had one of his daughters in the car with him as they followed mum to a shop.

Inside the shop, Colin watched mum purchase a little gold vase and when she wasn’t looking he also grabbed one and bought it as well.

He then got mum into a conversation, small talk I think, and offered her a lift home, just down the street. Things were different in those days so mum accepted - he did have his teenage daughter with him at the time.

However, during this encounter, Colin never revealed to mum that he was her half-brother.

This was apparently because mum had reacted so badly that day in 1941 when Elizabeth had approached her.

She was only 17 then and had either not kept, or had lost, her real mother’s contact details in the confusion of that day.

As the years went by and mum’s real family never heard from her, they presumed she wanted nothing to do with them.

Such a shame as mum was a widow from 1977. She was left with two children to raise, my brother, 13, and me, 10.

For many years we struggled, and to think her one surviving brother was so close and yet they never reunited properly is so tragic.

Colin kept the same little gold vase that he and mum had bought separately on that day in the shop. Apparently it was a prized possession until his death in 2006.

Darlinghurst Blog: Past and Present: Flanagan's Hotel and Burdekin Hotel

There has been a hotel on the junction of Liverpool and Oxford streets since the 1890s but it wasn't the same one that exists today. 

Flanagan's Hotel (above left), was built in the Victorian era and originally stood on the site but was demolished in the 1910s during the "remodelling" or widening of Oxford Street. 

The development of the new Flanagan's Hotel, which by the 1930s was known as the Burdekin Hotel, cost 10,000 Pounds. 

The old Flanagan's was just three levels, but the new Flanagan's was five levels, including cellar, and - according to a Sydney Morning Herald article from May 2, 1911 - would be built in a "classic design" of brick and stone with oriel windows on each side and a tower octagonally built on the corner. 

"The ground floor will be devoted exclusively to bars and parlours and the necessary private offices, and on the first floor there will be dining, drawing and reading rooms, with three bedrooms,'' the article said.

''The second floor will contain a large sitting room, bedroom and kitchen, and there will be suites of bedrooms on the upper floors.

''There will be a flat roof over the whole area and on it will be constructed two bedrooms, a laundry and out-offices.

"The bars and internal work generally are to be handsomely finished, with a free use of marble and polished fittings."

The city architect designed the building and the tender for work was won by Messrs JM and A Pringle, who would no doubt be very pleased to see the building still exists in good condition today.

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Links:

City of Sydney Archives

City of Sydney ArchivePix

Darlinghurst Blog: Villas of Darlinghurst: Elizabeth Bay House

Detail from Elizabeth Bay, by Conrad Martens, 1838

Elizabeth Bay House: allotment of 54 acres granted to Alexander Macleay in 1828.

Elizabeth Bay House is one of only five remaining homes from the original 17 ''gentlemans's villas" that were the first buildings to be developed on Wolloomooloo Hill aka Darlinghurst in the 1830s. 

But it is one of only three that survive in their original condition without serious modifications. The others include Barham (1833), inside the grounds of SCEGGS, and Tusculum (1831-1835), on Manning Street in Potts Point. 

The other two - Telford Lodge (1831) and Rockwall (1837) - are barely recognisable and have been extensively modified or partially demolished and I'll write about them another day for my Villas series. 

Elizabeth Bay House was built for Alexander Macleay, Colonial Secretary, who was granted 54 acres  on a site chosen for its vistas across Sydney Harbour (below). 

The greatest thing about Elizabeth Bay House today is that it's owned by the Historic Houses Trust and is open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. So last month I took advantage of a special Shop Local! offer to view the house for only $4 - half the normal entry fee. 

The only problem was that when I arrived with my blogging friend, Sarah, her daughter Billie and partner, Miles, the woman behind the front desk refused to give us the discount, saying she knew nothing about it.

There were a few Shop Local! fliers on the front desk so I pulled one open and showed her the $4 special, but even then she said, ''It would be okay if you had a coupon, but you've just come in off the street, so you'll have to pay the full price."

There was no mention of any coupon so we continued to haggle with her until she eventually phoned head office and they agreed that there was no coupon and we should be allowed in for the special price. 

It was a rather unsavoury episode and didn't make us feel all that welcome. 

But I was glad we only paid $4 because if I had paid the grand sum of $8 I would have felt that I needed to get my monies worth by reading every little boring plaque scattered about the house. And as much as I enjoy reading about history, it was much more fun to just roam carefree about the house and admire the woodwork and enormous scale of the rooms, especially the swooping Marulan stone staircase in the central saloon of the home, which is an engineering marvel and has been the site of many professional photography shoots. Marulan stone is a mudstone quarried in the Southern Tablelands region of NSW. According to the guidebook, ''each tread is a single piece of stone cantilevered from the wall and rests on the step beneath it (the protruding stones can be seen within the saloon cupboard)''. 

Scottish-born Macleay was a passionate and extravagant man who spent liberally on landscaping his homes and his entomological collection, of which his main interest was lepidoptera - or moths and butterflies. He accepted the Australian post due to financial necessity. 

In 1795 he had entered the British Civil Service as chief clerk in the War Office and was later secretary of the Transport Board, but when the board was disbanded in 1818, Macleay was out of work. 

With mounting bills for his homes in Westminster and Surrey - which was undergoing landscaping improvements - as well as big spends for his entomological collection and investment losses through his brother's bank in Scotland, Macleay began borrowing money from his eldest son, William.

But in 1825, his former colleagues rallied and secured him the Australian post, which came with a 2000 Pound salary and an official residence that was initially rent free. 

Macleay arrived in Sydney in 1826 with his wife and six daughters (of a total of 17 children) but was so enamoured with the place he eventually persuaded other family members to join them, including his son William and grandchildren Arthur and Georgiana Onslow, who were the children of his India-based daughter and son-in-law, Rosa and Arthur Onslow. 

In those days Macleay's bug collection was recognised as the largest in private possession. Naturally, he brought it with him to Australia and it possibly had pride of place in his library (below), which at the time was the largest room in an Australian house, reflecting the importance Macleay placed on his books and natural history collections. The entomological collection is now held in the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney.

With 54 acres of bushland at his disposal, Macleay immediately began establishing a botanic garden of imported plants to complement the native vegetation and the green space became quite an attraction with its rustic bridges, terrace walls and grottoes. 

According to one of his local nurseryman, Thomas Shepherd, Macleay didn't clear the land of natives, but selectively inter-planted his exotics to preserve the existing trees and shrubbery.

''From the first commencement he never suffered a tree of any kind to be destroyed, until he saw the distinct necessity of doing so,'' Shepherd wrote.

Today, one section of the garden remains just across the road at the front of the house and is known as Arthur McElhone Reserve (below; although the plants and landscaping are not original). There is also one grotto left if you know where to look (skip about 100m south of the house down Onslow Avenue, and follow the public path between the flats, Eltham and Tradewinds). 

The photograph above was taken from a first floor window, which had the junior member of our tour party, Billie, entranced. She probably could have stood there for an hour - quite an achievement for a two-year-old. But who could blame her; it looks like paradise and you can understand why Macleay convinced his extended family to join him in Sydney. 

The design of the house was as equally celebrated as its gardens and harbour views. The enormous two-storey, Greek Revival villa, with cellar, was designed by John Verge's architect firm and considered one of the most ''extravagant constructions of the day, with costs totalling around 10,000 Pounds'', according to the Villas book.

Plans for the home were developed in 1832 but construction was delayed until 1835 (possibly due to money being devoted to the development of the garden) and the house was not completed until 1839. Verge had retired by then, so there is some question surrounding his involvement in the design, with the possibility his employee and successor, John Bibb, may have played a greater architectural role. Scottish builder-architect, James Hume, was also brought to Sydney by Macleay and may have contributed to its design.

The villa design means the rooms are arranged around the central saloon or stair hall and allowed for "architectural experimentation with shaped interior spaces'', according to the guide book. As such, the rooms are shaped as ovals and quadrants. The ground floor rooms with their large French windows emphasise the relationship with the garden, Macleay's pride. 

But with all the love and passion Macleay dedicated to the development of Elizabeth Bay House and its gardens, he wasn't able to enjoy it for long. In 1837, Governor Richard Bourke forced Macleay to retire from his position, losing his 2000 Pound salary. In the 1840s, when the economy crashed in the new colony of Sydney, Macleay found himself further in debt. In late 1844 the house was mortgaged as Macleay's debt to his son, William, reached 18,195 Pounds.

The Macleays were forced to sell off furniture to settle some debts and in 1845 William took over the Elizabeth Bay House mortgage and assumed control of the estate. 

After less than six years in his ''grand, unfinished house'', Macleay then moved to his country property, Brownlow Hill, near Camden, southwest of Sydney. Macleay died in 1848 at Tivoli, the Rose Bay home of his daughter and son-in-law. 

William Macleay, an education commissioner, moved into the house in 1845 and lived there alone for 20 years. But ''lacking the aesthetic sensibility of his father, gave no thought to completing the building'', so that a planned Doric colonnade for the terrace surrounding the house was never built. 

I think the house still looks amazing, which brings to mind a Leonardo da Vinci quote: ''Art is never finished, only abandoned.''

William sounds like a curious character and according to the guidebook, during his time at Elizabeth Bay House, the residence ''was closed to all but the small circle of scientists and colonial intellectuals with whom (he) associated'', while ''the boundary of the estate was marked by signs warning potential trespassers of guard dogs.''

William died in 1865 and the house was inherited by his brother George who remained in London. George subdivided the estate and sold off lots on 99-year leases. In 1875, he subdivided again, leaving only 18 acres of the original 54 acre estate and in 1882, another sale left just 3 acres of garden around the house. 

George and William's cousin, William John Macleay and his wife, Susan, were tenants of the house from 1865 to 1903. Susan was the daughter of Edward Deas Thomson, Alexander Macleay's successor as Colonial Secretary, who owned another one of the original villas, Barham.
William John was also a keen entomologist and had taken over the care of Macleay's vast collection, building the ''Macleayan Museum'' on an area that is now the lower corner of Ithaca Road and Billyard Avenue. William John donated the collection to the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney in 1888 and was knighted for his generosity. He died in 1891.

From 1891 to 1911 the house was owned by James William Macarthur Onslow, great-grandchild of Alexander Macleay. You really need a family tree with the Macleays as there are so many of them.
Anyway, because the previous owner, George, had been based in London, the house was quite neglected, so Macarthur Onslow embarked on a maintenance program, which included new plumbing, the introduction of gas lighting, two new bathrooms, a servants's bell and a new portico.

From 1903 Macarthur Onslow leased the house to leather merchant, George Michaelis. In 1911, Michaelis purchased the house for 800 Pounds, becoming the first owner who was not from the Macleay family. He stayed on at the house, with his wife and three children until 1926, when he sold it to retailer Sir Sydney Snow. 

Snow, whose eponymous shop was on the corner of Pitt and Liverpool streets, paid 40,000 Pounds for the house before cannily on-selling it to Elizabeth Bay Estates Limited for 60,000 Pounds. (From 1929-1931, Snow was deputy chairman of Associated Newspapers Ltd, owner of the Sun newspaper.)

The final subdivision of the estate took place in 1927 with 16 being lots being put up for auction by Stanton & Son and Richardson & Wrench. Five lots were sold and were no doubt developed into the deco apartment blocks that exist around the house today. The remaining 11 blocks were sold again in 1934 and the late 1940s, when more apartment buildings were developed. 

The actual house failed to sell at auction in 1927 and that's when the squatters moved in. This period, when the ''Charm School'' artists occupied the house, was detailed in an exhibition, Kings Cross: Bohemian Sydney, that was held at Elizabeth Bay House in 2003. 

Artists that lived at the home in this period up to 1935 included Donald Friend, Rex Julius and Wallace Thornton, who held wild parties in the decaying mansion. 

In 1935, Elizabeth Bay Estates leased the property to a Mr and Mrs A. Hall and a Mrs L. Minnett, who ''renovated and redecorated the house as a venue for fashionable receptions'' and it ''featured in Sydney's social pages as a glamorous setting for wedding receptions, parties and balls'', according to the guide book.

In 1940, Evangeline Olga Murray, wife of realtor James Daniel Murray, purchased the house and immediately began renovating the home into 15 apartments, which was carried out ''sympathetically and without any damage to the original fabric of the house''.

In 1959 the house was declared an historic building whose preservation was ''essential for reasons of historic or architectural interest'' under the County of Cumberland Planning Ordinance.

When Ms Murray died in 1963, the Cumberland County Council purchased the home and the following year, when the council was abolished, it became the responsibility of the State Planning Authority. 

The authority commissioned repair works to the roof, dome and portico and in 1973 dedicated $275,000 to the building's restoration, but the costs rose to $750,000.

In 1977 the house opened to the public and in 1981 - along with Vaucluse House - became one of the first properties acquired by the Historic Houses Trust.

Yes, this is a very lengthy post, but that is mainly because there is so much information available about Elizabeth Bay House, its history, architecture and the families that lived there. The Historic Houses Trust has compiled a wealth of detail in its guidebook that I have barely touched on here. 

There are also countless plaques and information boards around the house and even an educational video (above), which can be viewed in the drawing room. The video features a bunch of school students on a bus to visit Elizabeth Bay House when one of the girls travels back in time and becomes a member of the Macleay family. 

You would need about one hour to wander around the house and about two hours if you have the patience to sit through the video and read all the information boards. But it's definitely worth a visit to the house, if only for the marvellous staircase and saloon. To make a day of it, stop by Lizzie Bay Gourmet, on the corner of Elizabeth Bay and Ithaca roads, where you can stock up on food supplies for a picnic in Macleay's old garden (Arthur McElhone Reserve, below) across the road from the house. 

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SOURCES: The Australian Dictionary of Biography

Villas of Darlinghurst

Historic Houses Trust - Elizabeth Bay House

Elizabeth Bay House Guide Book