According to the sales blurb, "in a boutique block of only four apartments, just minutes to Blues Point Road's popular mix of cafes and restaurants and within walking distance to the North Sydney CBD, this irreplaceable penthouse is arguably one of the finest apartments on the lower north shore".
It was last sold - not all four, mind you, but just the one! - in October 2013 for the trifling sum of $7,050,000. To live there today would be well out of my financial reach but it wasn't back in 1972 when I lived in this exact same spot at 6 Henry Lawson Avenue, Mcmahons Point.
Back in 1972 it was a slightly down-at-heel gracious old mansion with sweeping views across the harbour from its rambling garden outside and a sweeping staircase leading up to a dozen or more rooms on the first floor inside. One of those rooms, within view and earshot of Luna Park across Lavender Bay, was mine because then it was one of many boarding-houses one could find all over Sydney and all over Australia.
There is nowadays so much talk about homelessness but no mention of why this is so: the demise of boarding-houses! They fulfilled then - and would do so again today - the housing needs of those still too young or already too old to be able to afford or even need anything more.
And they did so at an affordable price with the added benefit of social interaction with a whole group of different people I would never have met otherwise. Boarding-house life made me what I am today, right down to my predilection for chicken Maryland on a Sunday night! ☺
