nretas, heritage report on stella maris hostel, darwin

Stella Maris Hostel, Darwin Background Historical Information

Prepared by the Heritage Branch, November 2009

D E P A R T M E N T O F N A T U R A L R E S O U R C E S , E N V I R O N M E N T , T H E A R T S A N D S P O R T

If you require further information about this background historical information,

please contact:

Heritage Branch

Department of Natural Resources, Environment, the Arts and Sport

P.O. Box 496

Palmerston NT 0831

Phone: 08 8999 8981

Please cite this report as:

NRETAS (2009). Stella Maris Hostel, Darwin: Background Historical

Information. Prepared by the Heritage Branch, NT Department of Natural

Resources, Environment, the Arts and Sport, Darwin.

Disclaimer:

The material presented in this report is believed to be correct at the time of

writing and is provided for information purposes only.

Cover Photo: Stella Maris Hostel, 2004


Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................1

2. LOCATION...................................................................................................1

3. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW ...........................................................................2

4. SITE DESCRIPTION ...................................................................................9

5. REFERENCES ..........................................................................................13


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1. Introduction This background historical information was compiled in May 2004 as part of a heritage assessment report prepared on the Stella Maris Hostel for the Heritage Advisory Council, as per the requirements under the Heritage Conservation Act.

2. Location The Stella Maris Hostel is located on Lot 5260 Town of Darwin or 1 McMinn Street, Darwin. It is technically on the corner of the Esplanade, but in fact the Esplanade as a street does not extend down to McMinn Street (See location map below).

Location Map


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3. Historical Overview 3.1 General The Stella Maris Hostel today consists of an older elevated building built in the 1930s, and a more modern building on the same allotment built c. 1990. The modern building is not considered significant and accordingly when reference is made to the existing building it is intended to mean the older elevated structure, not the Stella Maris Hostel as a whole. The construction date for the older elevated building on the site is uncertain, although it is clear that it was built prior to World War Two, almost certainly by the Commonwealth Railways.1 It therefore has strong associations with the now defunct North Australia Railway. The North Australia Railway (NAR) was constructed in the 1880s to serve the hinterland south of Darwin, although there had always been a vision that it would extend all the way to Adelaide. The line reached Pine Creek in 1889. It was extended to a point just north of Katherine in 1917, and then to Birdum in 1929. The NAR played an important role during World War Two when the line was busy with as many as seven trains a day, transporting military personnel and supplies to and from Darwin. Pearce (1983) puts the construction date of the house at 1937, although later research by the National Trust points out that a 1936 map of the Darwin central area (based on aerial photographs) shows two similar sized buildings sitting side by side parallel to the Esplanade, close to where the existing building now stands. These two buildings were part of a larger group of buildings marked on the map as ‘Commonwealth Railways’. The National Trust has surmised that the existing building on site today is one of these two buildings, with the other having been removed in the early 1940s. This would put the date of construction at 1936 or earlier. This is far from certain, but there is some intriguing evidence that suggests that not only was the house built prior to 1936, but a good many years earlier. A photograph dated 1936 entitled “an old railway house on the way to the wharf” shows the elevation of a house which bears a remarkable resemblance to the existing house as it appears in photographs taken in 1939 and later. If this is the same house, it would appear that it originally featured shutters and timber slats on the verandah, which were later replaced by louvres. In 1936, the existing building on the site would indeed have been “on the way to the wharf” via ‘traveller’s walk’, which was a popular walking route from the end of Cavenagh Street down to the wharf. The fact that it was referred to as ‘old’ in 1936 suggests the possibility that it might have been built in the 1920s or even the 1910s. Aerial photos of the area in question from the 1930s are ambiguous and to do not help to establish a date of construction. A 1943 aerial photograph is the first to clearly show the existing building. 1 Welke A and Wilson H, Darwin Central Area Heritage Study, Darwin, 1993, p 278.


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The earliest known photo of the building was taken in 1939. The photo was taken from Traveller’s walk and shows the oil tanks on Stokes Hill in the background. This photo provides some support for the argument that it is the same building shown in the photo dated 1936. The shutters are clearly visible and one can see that the configuration of the stairs is the same (that is, they runs straight down in front of the building, not at right angles to this as they do now)

‘An old railway house on the way to the wharf’ (1936) (Territory Images PH0326/0033)

Photo taken mid 1939 showing oil tanks at Stokes Hill with the building now known as the Stella Maris Hostel in the foreground

(from Rayner R, The Army and the Defence of the Darwin Fortress, 1995)


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The building was used by the railways until the 1970s. Kevin Markham (now of Port Augusta) lived in the house from 1960 to 1962 and gives the names of the post-war occupants as follows: ? – July 1948: Bill Stephens July 1948 – Feb 1950: W V (Bill) Virgo Easter 1950 – 1956: N W (Noel) Robuckle (?) 1956 – 1959: M E (Maurice) Signey 1960 – 1962: K P (Kevin) Markham 1963: G V (Graham) Willis Xmas 1963 – 1974: R J (Bob) Robinson

Two of the Markham children on the back stairs of the building now known as the Stella Maris Hostel. This photo was taken in the period 1960-1962.

(Photo courtesy Mr Kevin Markham)


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Former resident Ian Robinson says that his family lived there from early 1964 until 1974. They were in the house when cyclone Tracy struck. Ian Robinson’s father, Robert James (Bob) Robinson was Senior Clerk with the Commonwealth Railways. The house was damaged quite badly in Cyclone Tracy, and the family had to move to a house in Parap. Ian Robinson remembers that the louvres on the house were s-shaped fibre-cement louvres. His father replaced most of the shutters on the house with more louvres sometime between 1964 and 1971.

In 1976, the North Australia Railway was finally closed, and most buildings associated with it were sold and removed. Little evidence remains of the bustling rail yards which once occupied the flat land just below the Stella Maris Hostel, and only a few remnants of the line and its associated infrastructure still exist in the Darwin area.

During the late 1970s the Australian National Railways Commission handed the site over to the Darwin City Council to negotiate a lease for the Roman Catholic Stella Maris organisation. The building was leased to the Stella Maris organisation in 1979, for use as a licensed club.2 It would appear to be at this 2 Welke and Wilson, op cit

Sketch plan of building by Kevin Markham, showing the building as it was in the period 1960-62


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time that lot 1560, on which the building sits, was excised from the larger lot 4883.

One source indicates that for a time in the 1980s, after the East Arm Leprosarium closed, the building served as a hostel that was run by the nuns from the leprosarium.3 Information from the owners indicates that from 1980 the building was used as a Seafarers’ Centre. The building was used as the major facility up until 1991, when a new building was completed and the older building became an annexe. Originally the older building provided for office, bar, meals and recreation needs. From 1991 it provided an office, chapel, reading/writing room, TV room, and some accommodation.4 In 1995 Council recommended that the Stella Maris Hostel be registered as a heritage place. Then Minister Mike Reed refused the recommendation, saying that “the old railway house has been modified over the years for use as a hostel and social club. It is not in good condition and extensive maintenance work would be needed to retain the building. Above all, this site has been identified for some time for redevelopment and I cannot justify retention of existing building on this prime site.”5

3 ibid 4 Letter from Stella Maris Seafarers’ Centre to the Heritage Unit, 18 October 1994 5 Letter from Mike Reed as Minister for Lands Planning and Environment, to Chairman of the Heritage Advisory Council, Feb (?)1996

Photo taken in the period 1964-1974, from a similar angle to the contemporary photo on the front cover.

(Photo courtesy Ian Robinson)


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3.2 Architectural overview

We cannot be certain exactly what the existing building looked like when it was first constructed, although we have a good idea of the original plan form and of the general appearance of the building. The basic ‘schema’ is apparent, and that is an elevated house, with the upper floor plan featuring a central core with verandahs all around. This approach is typical of a regional architectural style which had evolved in Darwin and became widely adopted by the Commonwealth Government when it took over administration of the Territory from South Australia in 1911. Bridgman (2003) says of the Commonwealth takeover that “one of the immediate consequences…was to bring building in the Territory under the direction of Government architects at the Commonwealth Department of Works and Railways located in Melbourne. These architects would in time exercise considerable influence over the built environment of the Territory.”6 After 1911, the Commonwealth embarked on a program to provide housing to Commonwealth public servants in Darwin. This program included the construction of 14 houses at Myilly Point, built c. 1914. There was widespread use of split bamboo or timber lathes as a screening device around verandahs, and of top-hung shutters. Square or rectangular plan forms and simple hipped roofs were the rule. A distinctive feature of some houses of this era was a protruding corrugated iron stove recess.7 By the late 1930s the adjustable louvre was introduced, and plan forms and roof forms became more variable. Several new houses were built at Myilly Point just before the war, which were designed by Government Architect B C G Burnett. Four out of these five houses remain today. Along with Admiralty House on the Esplanade, and a number of other residences at the RAAF Base, Darwin (also attributed to Burnett), these buildings have been considered (until now) the oldest Government-designed residences in Darwin in reasonably intact form.8 The existing building at Stella Maris, in its original form, appears to have been very similar to the houses built by the Commonwealth in Darwin in the 1910s, such as the early Myilly Point houses which no longer exist – in terms of its floor plan, roof form, use of materials, and small details such as the roof ventilator and the ‘corrugated iron’ stove recess. Whatever the original date of construction, the building can be said to be significant in terms of the Darwin’s architectural history. It gains this status either as a building built in the 1930s, an immediate precursor to the extant 6 Bridgman, David, acclimatisation (architecture at the top end of Australia), 2003, p. 36 7 …although this feature also appeared on houses designed by the Commonwealth as late as the mid 1930s – e.g. Timber Creek Police Station. 8 The oldest residential building in the Darwin central area is probably a private residence at 106 The Esplanade, built c. 1924. After successive additions and renovations it is unknown how much of the original fabric of this building remains.


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buildings at Myilly Point and the RAAF Base - or possibly as an extremely rare if not unique example of a residence designed by the Commonwealth in the era prior to this, quite possibly as early as the 1910s.

Large elevated house at Myilly Point, 193?, one of several built c. 1914. Note simple hipped roof, shutters, and what appears to be slatted timber or bamboo walls

(Territory Images PH0110/0264)

Admiralty House, built in 1938 and the first of many houses in a similar style attributed to B C G Burnett. Note the more complex form, the introduction of gabled rooves, and the

widespread use of louvres in lieu of timber slats. (photo sourced from P & S Forrest 2004)


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4. Site Description The building is a timber-framed building clad mainly in fibre-cement sheeting. The building is elevated on circular concrete columns, and has a hipped roof of ‘corrugated iron’. In plan, the building is almost perfectly square. The upper floor consists of a central core raised slightly higher than the surrounding areas, with all flooring tongue-and-groove timber. The building has apparently undergone numerous alterations. One wall out of the four that define the central core has been removed, with a rudimentary steel truss supporting the span above. The external walls at the upper level generally have a fibre-cement lining, both inside and out, below sill level, with steel-framed louvres above sill level. In some places, there is full-height corrugated iron cladding, apparently original. The undercroft, once open, has been built in, using a variety of materials including some concrete block work. It is used for storage. The distinctive stove recess is still in place, although the flue is no longer there. A large pergola has been built to the rear. There is a concrete slab beyond the pergola which apparently belonged to the laundry/toilet facility once in this location. The remnants of the toilet can still be seen. On a site visit carried out on 1 April 2004, a portion of the internal fibre-cement cladding on the upper floor was removed below sill level, but it was not possible to find evidence of louvres or bamboo slats or the like which might have once been installed within the timber frame in this area. The condition of the house varies. The basic structure appears to be sound. The timber floor is suffering from some rot where the end-grain is exposed to the elements but otherwise appears sound. Some concrete columns appear to be in remarkably good condition, others have cracked badly. Some appear to have been replaced by steel columns. The roof is a little rusty, as is the corrugated iron wall cladding. Timber framing on the upper level which is exposed to the weather is suffering and requires maintenance. Roof framing appears sound.


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Front view of building, 2004.

View of southern side of building. Original ‘corrugated iron’ cladding can be seen on the right-hand side


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Interior view from near front entry. The steel truss in the upper part of the photo supports the roof where once a wall stood.

Interior view, looking towards front entry. The section of floor in the foreground is slightly higher than surrounding areas.


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The distinctive cantilevered ‘corrugated iron’ stove recess, an original feature of the building still in remarkably intact condition.

The undercroft


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6. References Bridgman, David, acclimatisation (architecture at the top end of Australia), 2003 Hardwick, Carol, Register of Significant European Cultural Sites in the Northern Territory, Report for the National Trust of Australia (NT), Darwin, 1984, vol. 1 NTRS 2/P2 – items 6 & 7 Platt Consultants, McDougall & Vines, Darwin Central Area Heritage Master Plan 1995 Powell, Alan, Far Country, Melbourne University Press, 1988 Welke A and Wilson H, Darwin Central Area Heritage Study, a report for the conservation commission of the NT, Darwin, 1993

nretas, heritage report on stella maris hostel, darwin

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