Bluestone Fitzroy terrace listed following La Mama Theatre's Betty Burstall passing
A character-filled bluestone Fitzroy terrace home - with all its accompanying colourful social history - has been listed following the mid-year death of Betty Burstall.
It last traded in 1967, the same year she opened the experimental performing space in Faraday Street, Carlton, La Mama Theatre in honour of the New York experimental off-off-Broadway theatre that had inspired her.
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La Mama Melbourne is credited as changing the course of Australian theatre, working with her fellow Melbourne University arts student, and then husband Tim Burstall. They lived in New York from 1965 and on the family's return to Melbourne, rented the Faraday Street space.
Her newspaper obitiary in The Age noted on Sunday, July 29, 1967, a young, abrasive playwright, Jack Hibberd, opened La Mama with a performance of his play, Three Old Friends, with "The Carlton Push" actors Graeme Blundell, Bruce Knappet and David Kendall. In the nine-metre-by-10-metre performance space, Betty laid red gingham tablecloths over makeshift tables with chairs scattered around the room; she charged five shillings for the play and a cup of coffee.
The Burstall's also had an hillside Eltham mudbrick retreat.
The selling instructions for the three bedroom 148 Nicholson Street offering comes from her two film industry sons, Dan and Tom. The listing agent Shayne Mooney of Nelson Alexander has suggested a $1.37 million to $1.5 million selling range at its October 26 auction.
An iconic Sydney offering is the Paddington terrace of the late artist Margaret Olley - her rambling home and hat factory studio - which has been listed for November 12 auction.
It comes with a $2.5 million-plus price guide, so well above RP Data's $1.38 million median house price for the inner eastern Sydney suburb.
Set on a 415-square-metre corner block, the Duxford Street terrace is being offered vacant but with Olley's prevailing colour scheme very much intact inviting recollection of her triptych, Yellow Room.
One of Australia’s most respected generous artists, the frugal Margaret Olley bought 48 Duxford Street (pictured below) in 1964. Its a vast rambling home of 14 rooms sitting on a triangular corner block with three street frontages.
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The original condition home comes with high ceilings, fireplaces, timber floors and moulded cornices. The terrace has four bedrooms and one upstairs bathroom.
It was in the rear yellow room hat factory setup where Margaret mostly worked, lived and also entertained.
Over the decades she donated more than 130 works valued at over $7 million to the Art Gallery of New South Wales along with the National Gallery of Australia, other State galleries and regional galleries.
Three rooms of the house - with an artist in residency opportunity - are being recreated at the Tweed River Art Gallery using original features from the Paddington house.
Her contents netted $625,000 for the Margaret Olley Trust where the house sale proceeds will go also.
It was among a property portfolio of 16 houses in Sydney but mostly in Newcastle.
It will be auctioned November 12 by Bradfield Cleary Double Bay agent Linda Juleff in conjunction with Harriet France at Harriet France Real Estate.
