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BUILDING 186

There has been earlier mention of the Toorak garden in which Octavious Beale had purchased in late 1883 from Josiah Austin. A squatter from the Western District. From the following letters it seems that he has now caught the contagion of the land-boom fever sweeping Melbourne and is about to rent a house in Toorak, close enough to allow him (and Lilly) to supervise the building of his new home, "Sommariva," in that garden.

This magnificent family mansion was designed by Willaim Salway, F.R.I.B.A., and built in five and a half acres of lovely grounds laid out by William Sangster (who was responsible for the gardens of "Como" and of F.T Sargood's "Rippon Lea"), fronting Boundary Road, Toorak (now Kooyong Road). Here Lilly and Tavy's ninth child was born - Harold Strangman Beale, my father.

Their neighbors were such luminaries as the Hon. William Bayles, Sir James Lorimer M.L.C., Minister for Defence, Sir Janes McBain M.L.C., C.M. Officer M.P., George Stevenson, a director of the Dominion Banking & Investing Corporation Ltd. which was to come to a rather sad end, and their immediate neighbor, J.M. Bruce who was a director of Patterson, Laing & Bruce and the father of the future Prime Minister, S.M. Bruce.

In 1885 Octavius and his brother Francis had erected Beale's Building in Bronte Road, Waverly. During the building of "Sommariva" Octavius spent a great deal of time in Sydney supervising the construction of 484 George Street, and I believe thouhg the evidence is tenuous, he was also involved in the erection in Lower George Street, of what became known as "The Bulletin Building" - now "George Patterson House," and in imminent danger of demolition.

However, as is quite obvious from Lilly's letters, the cost of "Sonnariva's " building, and Tavy's activities in Sydney, had been far too high, and with the boom conditions beginning to falter, it was necessary to sell the house almost immediately. In May, 1890 it was sold to James Grice, who called it "Oma." He in turn, sold it in 1906 - "at a sacrifice," for 11,000 pounds - to the Simmons family, who re-christianed it "Nareeb," and it remained in their posession, unaltered and still lit by gaslight, until 1964 when it was sold to a developer for sub-division, and demolished. Tavy's youngest child, Mary, and her daughter, Elizabeth Henderson, who knew the Misses Simmons ocasionally stayed with them at "Nareeb."

It was Miss Gertrude Simmons' wish that the magnificent gates of "Sommariva/Nareeb" should be given to the National Trust, and in 1966, they were erected at the Park Street Entrance of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne.