Boomerang – Billyard Avenue – Elizabeth Bay – NSW

Boomerang, Elizabeth Bay — Wikimedia Commons (Boomerang111.JPG); verify licence on Commons.

Boomerang – 42 Billyard Avenue – Elizabeth Bay – NSW

Inter-war Spanish Mission / Hollywood Spanish mansion + Max Shelley garden Neville Hampson for Frank Albert, 1926–1928 · Standing — private residence · SHR #00038

Billyard Avenue still does that rare Elizabeth Bay trick: Victorian and Inter-war piles staring at the same scrap of harbour while flat towers elbow in. Boomerang is the Spanish Mission knockout rough stucco, Cordoba tiles, barley-twist columns, a private cinema in the basement — built for music-publishing money on what used to be Macleay’s orangery.

At a glance

• Address: 42 Billyard Avenue, Elizabeth Bay NSW 2011 (alternate: 9–11 Ithaca Road listed on SHR); City of Sydney LGA
• Traditional Custodians: Cadigal / Wangal bands of the Eora Nation (SHR Aboriginal history notes for City of Sydney / Elizabeth Bay)
• Built: 1926–1928 for Frank Albert (sheet-music / harmonica publisher); on the site of an earlier Edwardian house also called Boomerang
• Architect / garden: Neville Hampson (house); M.R. (Max) Shelley (garden/grounds), possibly with Hampson and landscape gardener A.J. Doust
• Style: Inter-war Spanish Mission / Spanish Revival (Hollywood-derived pastiche palms, fountains, colonnades, grilles, loggias)
• Rooms (SHR): about 25 main rooms, six bathrooms, four kitchens; private basement cinema; garage/butler’s quarters (later guest quarters)
• Heritage: NSW State Heritage Register #00038 — listed 2 April 1999 (Permanent Conservation Order from 6 April 1981); also National Trust, RAIA register, former Register of the National Estate
• Site roots: former Alexander Macleay Elizabeth Bay estate kitchen garden / orchard / orangery; possible remnant mango and avocado near the street gate
• Fate / current use: Standing private residence; former tennis court land absorbed into Beare Park (public)

Site & setting

Elizabeth Bay — Gurrajin in Aboriginal place-names recorded for this shore — is Cadigal/Wangal Country. Governor Darling’s 1826 grant to Colonial Secretary Alexander Macleay produced the celebrated Elizabeth Bay estate garden. The Boomerang lot sat in the enclosed harbour-side kitchen garden / orangery before George Macleay’s mid-century leasehold subdivisions and Billyard Avenue’s formation. William John Macleay’s nearby Linnean Society hall (1885) and Macleayan Museum left tree remnants that the SHR still tracks on and beside the property.

Today the house faces Billyard Avenue with a herringbone-brick carriage loop and sunken ornamental pool to the street, then drops to lawns, sea wall and jetty toward the bay. Beare Park now occupies the former tennis-court strip to the east — still readable in perimeter walls and a grilled gate. Neighbours on this blog’s beat include Tiranna (same street), Elizabeth Bay House up the slope, and the Potts Point Verge cluster across the peninsula.

Timeline

• Pre-1826 – Cadigal / Wangal Country; Elizabeth Bay foreshore part of enduring Aboriginal harbour livelihood (SHR / Ingrey & Irish framing cited on sheet).
• 1826 – Governor Darling grants 54 acres at Elizabeth Bay to Alexander Macleay; subject land becomes part of the estate orangery / kitchen garden.
• 186582 George Macleay subdivides and sells leaseholds; Billyard Avenue formed.
• 1875 onward W.J. Macleay leaseholds at Ithaca / Billyard; Linnean Hall 1885; museum collections later to University of Sydney.
• c.1902 – Frank Albert builds an earlier two-storey brick house named Boomerang on this site (SHR); later demolished for the Spanish Mission mansion.

1926–1928 – Present Boomerang built for Frank Albert; architect Neville Hampson; garden by Max Shelley (featured with Harold Cazneaux photographs in The Home, 1 February 1929). Private cinema opens 1928 — contemporary film press called the fit-out extravagant / “best motion picture outfit” language quoted on SHR via Dawson 1980.

1929 – Albert acquires yacht Bona (Walter Reeks, 1903), renames it Boomerang; later presented to Sydney Heritage Fleet (1987 per SHR).

1962 – Frank Albert dies; house empty for years with caretaker/gardener only (SHR).

1978 – Sold to Tom & Ian Hayson; subdivision; part acquired for Beare Park extension; house + ~1 acre resold to Peter & Astrid Burnett — reported as Sydneys first million-dollar house sale (figures conflict across secondary reports; SHR cites $1.2m / Dawson $1.5m — flag).

1981–82 – Peter Fox purchase; after Fox’s death, bookmaker Mark Read buys (July 1982); installs swimming pool on northern lawn; relocates sundial to NE bed; Seafront rose garden removed.

1985 / 1993 Warren Anderson ownership chapter; Bank of New York possession / mortgagee drama (SHR); then Nati & Miki Stoliar.

Post-1996 – Duncan & Sally Mount (~$20.7m cited on SHR); garage/butler’s quarters converted to guest house; major works.

2002 / 2005 – John & Julie Schaeffer; then Lindsay Fox (daughter Katrinas name) for $20m (SHR).

2005–06 – Documented conservation / repair works (City Plan Heritage HIS summarised on SHR).

2 April 1999 – SHR listing #00038 (PCO from 1981).

Today – Private residence; garden more subtropical and shady than Shelley’s 1920s sun-loving scheme; jetty and much hardscape survive.

Architecture & interiors

The SHR significance statement (via Apperly, Irving & Reynolds) calls Boomerang one of the most opulently Spanish houses in Australia — an exemplary large-scale Spanish Mission / Hollywood Spanish mansion and garden, with rare intact Max Shelley landscape design and rare Hampson domestic work in Sydney.

Outside: three-level rendered masonry; Wunderlich multi-coloured glazed terracotta Cordoba roof tiles; perforated screens, colonnades, grilles, loggias, barley-twist columns; wrought-iron window grilles and gates; herringbone brick drives and terraces; ceramic-tiled ponds and fountains (including an entrance-lobby fountain with Aboriginal face motif noted on SHR — describe, do not invent meaning).

Inside (SHR fabric notes): limestone / travertine entry paving; high-quality timber parquetry (English oak with ebony / walnut borders in key rooms); marble-and-bronze main stair; elaborately tiled bathrooms (gold, iridescent blue, green, white); inbuilt bedroom joinery; lower-ground private cinema (burgundy velvet curtains and Cummings & Wilson projectors noted as surviving into 1980 when seats had already been removed).

Garden: Mediterranean / Hollywood / Islamic flavour — palms (Lord Howe, Cocos/Syagrus, Canary Island date, Chinese fan / Trachycarpus), Norfolk Island pine as harbour landmark, Bhutan cypresses replacing earlier Mediterranean cypresses, crazy paving, sundial (relocated), Moorish tile planters. Possible pre-1926 Macleay-era mango and avocado at the street wall. Northern swimming pool is a post-1982 insertion, not original Shelley.

People & anecdotes

Frank Albert — sheet-music and harmonica fortune; trademarked “Boomerang” on German mouth organs that sold by the hundreds a week by the late 1890s (SHR). He entertained with Sunday cinema screenings that were never public. Yachting circle: the renamed Boomerang yacht lived at the private jetty and later went to the Sydney Heritage Fleet.

Neville Hampson and Max Shelley Hampson’s rare surviving Sydney house; Shelley’s 1920s garden published in The Home with Cazneaux photographs. A.J. Doust worked on the grounds (maintenance / adaptation as plantings matured).

Later chapters read like a Sydney trophy-house soap: Hayson subdivision and Beare Park salvage; Burnett’s million-dollar headline; Fox / Read / Anderson legal theatre; Mounts’ guest-wing conversion; Schaeffer and Fox ownership. Treat property-press dollar claims as volatile.

Image gallery guidance

Do not invent URLs — search and embed with acknowledgement.

1. Harbour elevation / Beare Park view Search: City of Sydney; creative-commons harbour photos; SHR image bank if available. Caption idea: Spanish Mission on the old Macleay orangery — Boomerang from the bay.

2. Harold Cazneaux, 1928 — garden from first-floor terrace Search: NLA PIC HC 101/5; The Home 1 Feb 1929. Caption idea: Shelley’s garden when the palms were young — Cazneaux for The Home.

3. Billyard Avenue gates, carriage loop, sunken front pool Search: street photography; conservation HIS photos. Caption idea: Herringbone brick and Cordoba tiles — Hollywood Spanish for Elizabeth Bay.

4. Private cinema / State Theatre miniature (historic interiors) Search: Dawson 1980 Sunday Herald feature; archival interiors only with rights. Caption idea: Sunday screenings for guests — never a public cinema.

5. Yacht Boomerang / Sydney Heritage Fleet Search: Sydney Heritage Fleet; SMH 2003 yacht history cited on SHR. Caption idea: Same name, different vessel — Alberts racing yacht preserved.

6. Elizabeth Bay House / Tiranna streetscape context Search: MHNSW; this blog’s existing posts. Caption idea: Same estate breakup — museum piece up the hill, Spanish Mission on the foreshore.

What stands today

Boomerang stands as a private house at 42 Billyard Avenue. It is not a house museum. The former tennis court is now part of Beare Park (public foreshore), where walls and a gate still whisper the estate edge. The jetty and much of Shelley’s hardscape structure survive; the garden is lusher and shadier than 1929.

What you can do:

• Walk Billyard Avenue and Beare Park; read the Spanish Mission massing from the public foreshore (do not trespass).
• Pair with Elizabeth Bay House (Museums of History NSW) for the Macleay estate story, and with Tiranna on the same street.
• For statutory detail, read SHR item #00038 before citing fabric or exemptions.

Sources & further reading

• Heritage NSW / State Heritage Inventory — Boomerang SHR #00038: https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5045596 (also HMS ViewItem itemId=5045596)
• Apperly, Irving & Reynolds, A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture (cited on SHR)
• Carlin, Scott / Historic Houses Trust, Elizabeth Bay House: a history and guide (2000) — remnant tree notes cited on SHR
• The Home, 1 February 1929 — Shelley garden + Cazneaux photographs
• NLA — Harold Cazneaux, Boomerang, home of Mr. F. Albert… garden from first floor terrace, 1928”
• Landarc / City of Sydney Register of Significant Trees — Boomerang entries cited on SHR
• Stuart Read, The Mysterious Mr Shelley” (cited on SHR)
• Sydney Heritage Fleet — yacht Boomerang (ex-Bona)
• Dictionary of Sydney Elizabeth Bay place context: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/
• Trove — search “Boomerang” + “Billyard” + “Albert” + “Elizabeth Bay”

Research gaps: Full interior photography rights; verify any film-location claim independently; update ownership only from primary conveyancing / reliable press at publish.

Related on this blog

• Elizabeth Bay House – Elizabeth Bay
• Tiranna – 17 Billyard Avenue – Elizabeth Bay
• Tudor – Elizabeth Bay
• Jenner House – Potts Point (search Jenner on this blog)
• Draft siblings this batch: Admiralty House / Kirribilli House; Strickland House; Fernleigh Castle
• Do not confuse with Boomera – Potts Point (separate house / separate draft)

The State Heritage Register calls it one of the most opulently Spanish houses in Australia. This scrapbook sticks to the SHR sheet and refuses to invent a single fountain.