Marara
Careel Bay, Pittwater NSW
Marara was built around 1917 as a beach house for Dr James Frederick Elliott (1858-1928), a pharmaceutical chemist and chemical engineer and a noted yachtsman, with a town residence in Point Piper.
The house is believed to be the work of architect James Peddle of Peddle & Thorp and has the characteristic features of Peddle’s work from this time: timber built on a rusticated stone base, with boarded gables and projecting rafters, beamed ceilings and dark interior panelling concealing built-in cupboards. In floor plan it reflects the spirit of the ‘bush bungalows’ that Peddle wrote about in The Home magazine in September 1920, a place where the owner might ‘secure temporary release from some of the conventionalities of our social system’, without foregoing either comfort or pleasure.
The house, set amongst tall-trunked eucalyptus, with a northern outlook over Careel Bay towards the Barrenjoey peninsula and with a boatshed on the waterfront, was bought following Elliott’s death by Dr Herbert Henry Schlink (1883-1962). Schlink was a noted gynaecologist and hospital administrator, knighted in 1954. Marara remained in Schlink family ownership until 2004.
Photographer: Brenton McGeachie
Date Photographed: February 2004
Original image format: transparency film: 6x6cms
Copyright: Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Photograph © Brenton McGeachie
Further reading: James Peddle “The Bush Bungalow” in The Home, September 1920, pp.28-29, 41
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