Incredible photos from inside a retired nurse’s terrace from the 1930s that’s almost exactly the same as the day she moved in – and even has a 100-year-old stove in perfect working order
- A single-storey terrace in one of Sydney’s most sought-after suburbs looks like it has been frozen in time
- Built in the early 1930s, the two-bedroom in Bondi Junction still has many of its original fixtures
- A gas stove from a range of cookers released in 1917 is still in perfect working order, 103 years after launching
- Real estate agents discovered a newspaper dated Sunday, November 3, 1957 in one of the cupboards
- That was the date the Soviet Union launched the first-ever living animal into space – a dog named Laika
- The installation of a small bathroom and demolition of one partition wall are the only updates in 90 years
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A single-storey terrace in one of Sydney’s most sought-after suburbs has been frozen in a bygone era.
The two-bedroom in Bondi Junction was built in the early 1930s and still has many of the original features 90 years later, thanks to preservation by the 81-year-old retired nurse who spent ‘almost all her life’ there until moving into assisted living earlier this year.
The kitchen is vintage personified, with a gas stove from the ‘Early Kooka’ range manufactured by Metters and Company in Adelaide in 1917 – during World War One – that’s still in perfect working order.
While clearing the house for auction, agent Michael Minogue from Woollahra agency 1st City Minogue + Doake discovered a newspaper dated Sunday, November 3, 1957 in one of the cupboards.
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The interior of this single-storey terrace built in the early 1930s in Sydney’s Bondi Junction looks to have been frozen in time
The ‘Early Kooka’ gas stove (right) comes from a range manufactured by Metters and Company in Adelaide in 1917 and is still in perfect working order, 103 years after it was first released
That was the date the Soviet Union launched the first-ever living animal into space: a stray dog from the streets of Moscow named Laika.
‘It’s been pretty well preserved,’ Mr Minogue told Daily Mail Australia.
‘It’s a great house and all the locals kept an eye out for the diminutive little woman who lived there.’
A wood-framed television with matching knobs on either side of the dashboard – a style popular throughout the 1950s – sits in the floral carpeted living room opposite a boarded up fireplace, believed to have been installed when the house was built.
Mr Minogue said the installation of a small bathroom and the demolition of a partition wall between the laundry and kitchen are the only updates made in the past 90 years.
The wall was knocked to accommodate a sink in the kitchen, which was originally built without one.
A 1950s-style wood-framed TV with matching knobs on either side of the dashboard sits in the floral carpeted living room
Also found in the house was an old typewriter (left) that weighed ‘about two tonnes’, so heavy you could barely lift it
While clearing the house for auction, realtor Michael Minogue discovered a newspaper dated Sunday, November 3, 1957 in one of the cupboards
Mr Minogue said he enjoyed a cup of coffee brewed on the century-old stove and confirmed it worked ‘just fine’, before he set to work removing rubbish ahead of the auction.
During the cleaning he also found an old typewriter that weighed ‘about two tonnes’, so heavy he could barely lift it, as well as a collection of 1930s-era timber furniture.
Mr Minogue said the house attracted ‘a lot of interested buyers’, with a mix of investors, developers and private home buyers looking for a challenging ‘fixer upper’.
The house sold for an undisclosed sum on Saturday to a local woman living in Bellevue Hill, who plans to renovate and rent it until she is ready to downsize and move there later in life.
The historic house attracted ‘a lot of interested buyers’, with a mixture of investors, developers and private home buyers
The demolition of a partition wall between the kitchen and laundry to accommodate a sink (pictured) is one of the only updates made in the past 90 years
Once home to a working-class immigrant community, Bondi Junction is now an ultra-desirable neighbourhood popular among young professionals for its proximity to Bondi Beach on one side and the CBD six kilometres away on the other.
The Junction is today Sydney’s fifth largest business district behind the CBD, North Sydney, Parramatta and Chatswood.
The median price for a two-bedroom house is $1.93million (AUD), while the average rental cost for a two-bedroom unit is $750 per week.