Revered author Donald Horne's longtime Woollahra terrace listing
Cardiff, the time capsule Woollahra home of late author and academic Donald Horne will be offered for auction on 18 November.
Property Observer notes it was bought for £7,700 in early 1966, two years after publication of The Lucky Country in 1964.
The four-bedroom Victorian terrace at 53 Grosvenor Street has been listed with James Dunn of Richardson & Wrench, Double Bay. There are $1.75 million plus price expectations.
Its period details include three marble gas fireplaces, high ceiling and timber floorboards.
The terrace has a handsome study with floor-to ceiling bookcases, fireplace and double french doors leading to a patio on the 175 square metre block.
Since Horne died in 2005, his widow Myfanwy continued to reside at the terrace which last traded 48 years ago.
Myfanwy Horne, who died late last year, was a book editor whose enduring legacy is her work as Donald's editor. Donald wrote some 26 books, including his most famous work The Lucky Country, published in 1964.
The 1966 purchase, a Trade Credits Limited mortgagee sale, gave his occupation as advertising executive.
On his death, the writer David Marr noted Horne's various careers - from advertising, via the Packer press, through academe and then "a long non-retirement as the sage of Woollahra".
Marr added Horne was one of those writers cursed by writing a book so famous that everything else he wrote lived in its shadow.
The title of Horne's The Lucky Country comes from the opening words of the book's last chapter:
Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.
Horne's statement was an indictment of 1960s Australia that "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society."
In his 1976 follow-up book, Death of the Lucky Country, Horne was critical of the "lucky country" phrase being used as a term of endearment for Australia.
Elsewhere on the street, the Polese family recently secured $1.9 million for their investment terrace that sits on 174 square metres with parking. It cost $490,000 in 1988.
