Pittwater sandstone retreat previously owned by poet Dorothea Mackellar sells for around $6m

Publish date: 2024-06-29

Tarrangaua, the seclu­ded sandstone summer ­retreat on Pittwater of the acclaimed poet Dorothea Mackellar, has a new custodian.

The 1925 waterfront home set in bushland at Lovett Bay has been sold off market for around $6 million through Lachlan Elder at LH Hooker.

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The home, designed by architect Hardy Wilson after the 440sqm holding cost £1200, can only be reached by boat. It was Mackellar who named it Tarrangaua, Aboriginal for high rough hill. It was her longtime ­retreat, often arriving from her parents’ home, Rosemont in Woollahra, in a chauffeur-driven yellow Rolls Royce at Church Point.

It was sold after her death in 1968 at age 82 for $27,000.

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The current vendors, Susan Duncan, and husband, Bob have divided their time between Pittwater and the Mid North Coast. Duncan’s Lovett Bay sea-change from magazine editor was told in her best-selling memoir, Salvation Creek and then in A Life on Pittwater in 2009.

Working from Dorothea’s previously shuttered study, Duncan once describe the room as bliss.

“I can see everything from here. If I’m working at twilight I can see all the yachts. Their sails look like a million feather quills,” she said.

Originally published as Pittwater sandstone retreat previously owned by poet Dorothea Mackellar sells for around $6m

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