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.
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
