Memories of Iluka Road
My parents, Max Carment (1918-2007), a chartered accountant and his wife Diana (nee Sulman, 1927-2005), and I (born in 1949) moved to 26 Iluka Road, Clifton Gardens from Cremorne in 1951 as a bigger house was needed with my sister Ann (later Annie) about to be born. I cannot recall the exact purchase price but my father later told me that houses in Iluka Road were quite cheap in those days in comparison with many other parts of Sydney’s lower north shore. My brother Tom was born in 1954. My parents sold the house in 1973 after Annie and I left home. It was a most comfortable and large but far from luxurious brick bungalow on the side of a steep hill sloping towards Taylors Bay. It had 16 rooms of greatly varying sizes, terraced garden beds and sweeping harbour views. Until insect screens were installed a few years after we moved in mosquitoes and flies could be very annoying. My parents also had to have a garage built. Two more rooms, a front deck and a swimming pool were later added. Although designed by the prominent Sydney architect B. J. Waterhouse (1876-1965) in about 1939 and in pretty good condition, the house was recently, and inexplicably, demolished. Other Waterhouse designs include May Gibbs’ house, ‘Nutcote’.
Iluka Road was a wonderful place in which to grow up as there were other families living in the street with children of around the same ages as Annie, Tom and I and the nearby Ashton Park reserve provided a large playground for all kinds of adventurous activities. Popular recreations included bush walks, war games, street cricket, racing our scooters (our parents did not allow bikes because of all the hills), swimming at nearby Clifton Gardens, which we called ‘Cliffo’, and fishing. We also sailed a yacht that was anchored not far from the house in Taylors Bay.
When we moved to Iluka Road many of the blocks were covered with bush and unoccupied but that changed as more houses were built. Neighbours on the lower level of Iluka Road where we lived included the Theosophist community in the huge and imposing Manor, the Clarks, the Middletons, the well known bookmaker Bill Waterhouse and his family, the Monticones, the Coombs, the Stephensons, the Harringtons, the Rileys, Ollie Alldiss and his wife, the Stockwells, the Neaves, the society photographer Monte Luke and his wife, the Dobbies, the Kings, the Hamiltons, the Briggs family, the Bradley sisters, who became famous for their bush conservation work, and the Heaths. We were especially friendly with the Stockwells. Good friends on the upper level of Iluka Road were the Rickards.
For some years after we moved to Iluka Road, meat, fruit, vegetables, bread, milk and groceries were all delivered to our house. Initially the bread and milk deliveries were by horse and cart. Mosman Junction as we always called it (‘Village’ seems to be quite recent) was a much less impressive shopping centre in the 1950s and 1960s than it is today. I can remember no restaurants or bookshops and my mother, a superb cook, frequently complained about the poor quality of the meat sold at the local butcheries. The purchase of items such as good clothes and books required ferry trips into ‘town’.
Most residents of the street were from business and professional backgrounds. I don’t, however, recall anyone, with the possible exception of Bill Waterhouse, as being really wealthy. ‘Comfortably middle class’ probably best describes its social composition. In those days the richest people seemed to be concentrated in eastern suburbs like Bellevue Hill and Vaucluse.
Almost all the children attended private schools. I initially was at the Miss Godsons’ kindergarten in Kardinia Road before going on to Mosman Prep and Shore. Other popular schools included Sydney Grammar, Riverview, Queenwood, which my sister attended, and SCEGGS Redlands. Most people were Protestants but there were a few Catholics. As Presbyterians, my own family went to services from time to time at Scots Kirk in Mosman. I generally walked to and from Mosman Prep, often with a friend, but used buses when I was at Shore.
After 1972 I lived in Canberra, Perth, Rockhampton and Darwin and only moved back to live in Mosman (at my parents’ former house in Fairfax Road) last year. From time to time I re-visit Iluka Road as it holds special memories for me. It has, however, changed quite a lot as some of the most attractive older homes have been demolished and replaced with generally less interesting structures that occupy more of each block. One of the few houses in the street that appears in a 1919 aerial photograph was recently demolished and another in the same photograph is under threat. The ease with which demolitions are often approved has pushed up property values to extraordinarily high levels, meaning that only very wealthy people or those with huge mortages can now afford to move to the street. I am most fortunate to have lived there before this happened.
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David Carment’s is delightful, as is David Hamilton.
I, of course, remember David’s brother Tom well, who was my age.
We lived in the Madame Kirsova house.
I went to Miss Heath, then Miss Godson’s, then Mosman Prep then Shore.
The “bush” was our playground.
I now live with my family on the southern corner of Burrawong and Thompson.
These recollections are interesting to me as I am researching the lives of conservationists Eileen and Joan Bradley, who developed Bush Regeneration in Ashton Park in the 1960s. I would be glad to read any stories anyone has about the Bradley sisters and their mother, ‘Dot’ .
I read the article on Iluka Road, and was disappointed to see that the writer did not include the Boothroyds who lived at "Pendragon", 44 Lower Iluka Road, the same part of Iluka Road that the writer lived on. There was overlap in the dates, in that in the 1954 Electoral Roll period, my grandmother May Boothroyd, my Uncle Arthur Boothroyd (artist, e.g. for the Women’s Weekly, but later solo), and my Uncle Jack Boothroyd were still living in that street when the writer lived there. Jack gave his address as 3 Iluka Road, but May and Arthur were at 44. (My Uncle Gordon was on the Electoral Roll as being at "Pendragon" with his mother and Arthur there for a while from when back from Britain in 1954.) "Pendragon" (the source of my father’s favourite nickname for my Grandmother) was, I believe, immediately next to the Misses Bradley, whom I met several times – or it might have been a couple of doors away. (Uncle Arthur was a friend of theirs and took me there.) A Bryden-Brown family also lived in the street (Mrs Bryden-Brown lectured in German at Sydney University late ‘50s and early ‘60s).
Till the time of her marriage to Rev. Roderic (JRLJ) Johnstone, then Curate at St. Clement’s Mosman, my mother Beryl lived there too; but that was long before the Carment family moved to the street. By 1954 another of my uncles, Sharland, was in Western NSW, managing a station.
I did not live in Iluka Road, but I stayed there at least once, and visited often. At nights we used to enjoy the city lights from my grandmother’s balcony which overlooked the bay. We heard the tooting of steamships as they signalled, watched small white-sailed yachts sailing, and sometimes small flying boats landed in that very bay. Many times we went down the steep bush path from the house to the beach and scrambled on the shell-encrusted rocks with their little pockets of sea-water, and we also walked along a bush track in the direction of Bradley’s Head. The steps and garden up to the street level from the house was very steep.
My Uncle Arthur, the artist, by the way, turned 100 years old on 1st October 2010, and died on 10 February this year. In addition to being an artist, at one stage he was Rector’s Warden at St. Clement’s Mosman. Another thing about him, he had a studio on Raglan St behind a house for a while, but later he built one at the street level of my grandmother’s house; may have converted the garage to it, or added it on beside the garage.
My sister Catherine Hewett is on the pastoral team of St. Clement’s Mosman still.
Regards,
Liz Christmas (nee Johnstone, daughter of Beryl Boothroyd, daughter of Kenneth and May Boothroyd)
Just a few notes on the very interesting account of Iluka Road. In the early 30's my brother Dion attended a kindergarten run by the people at the Manor. I remember going to a Christmas party there. One of the more colourful personalities in the area was Madam Kirsova who was a ballet dancer who left one of the companys that came to Sydney in the 1940's.
Morella Road was a bit more cosmopolitan than Iluka which was something of a back water. Names from the thirties and forties included the Parers, Lyons, Hemingways, Keeches, Wynns, Doblyns, Snellings, Neilsons - all with families of children. We (Hamiltons) lived two up from the Clifton Gardens Hotel, demolished in the 60's. Agreed a wonderful place to grow up!
October '08
— David Hamilton · 19 October 2008, 00:57 · #