Her name is Moonya. It’s right there on the name plate between the tessellated tiles and the stained-glass door, in the kind of serif lettering that suggests the original owners took naming their house very seriously, as all people should. She’s a double-fronted Federation home on Woodside Avenue, Burwood — five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a 1,011 square metre block with a 20-metre frontage, and roughly 84 years of continuous occupation by the same family without being meaningfully touched. The agent calls this “largely untouched.” We call it a miracle.
The original Federation bones are extraordinary: a verandah running the full width of the house with brick piers, a timber ceiling and tessellated tile underfoot; multiple sets of internal stained glass doors with Art Nouveau tulips in red, green and gold that a church would be glad to claim; plasterwork ceilings so detailed and intact you’d assume they were a recent installation until you notice everything else around them is from 1918 and hasn’t moved since. The main living room has the original fireplace, original pendant light, original patchwork carpet in pink and green that has absolutely no business being as good as it still is.
Then the house takes a gentle left turn and lands somewhere in 1973. One kitchen — the back one — has been wallpapered in a full olive-and-brown geometric print of the sort normally associated with avocado bathroom suites and the Whitlam government. Red curtains, green tiles above the bench, brown lino underfoot. It is a complete and coherent world. We respect it enormously. The main kitchen — cream cabinetry, lace curtains, a gas stove, a clock on the wall — reads more mid-century and is doing so with full sincerity. There are two bathrooms: the original with its white subway tiles, pedestal basin and clawfoot bath, and a second painted from floor to ceiling in solid aqua that has clearly never entertained a renovation conversation in its life.
The listing notes the property is not under BLEP Heritage or Conservation, which the agent presumably intended as a selling point for developers. The community read it differently. This is a property that held one family for almost a century, that still has its name on the front, its glass in the doors, its plaster on the ceiling and its wallpaper on the kitchen walls — and someone wants to put a big beige building on the site. People are not happy, Jan. We are not happy. The video has the receipts. Moonya has been sold, and whatever comes next, she deserved better.
