Do you remember the Futuro, North Adelaide’s flying saucer house?

IT was called the Futuro, and in the 1970s and 80s in upper-class Melbourne Street it stood out like ... well, a flying saucer. And the story of its owner, Derek Jolly, was even more remarkable.

Derek Jolly races his Decca Special during the Wakefield Trophy in 1957.

• The three-day Myponga Pop Festival in 1971

MANY people will have memories of a rather strange-looking “flying saucer-like’’ building in Melbourne St, North Adelaide, around the 1970s and ’80s.

It was called the “Futuro’’ and was owned by the late Derek Jolly, local entrepreneur and larger- than-life character who was responsible for much of the development of Melbourne St in those years.

The Futuro was an amazing construction for its time, a round prefabricated house, originally designed as a ski cabin by Matti Suuronen, a Finnish man. Though it was quite popular at first, eventually fewer than 100 were made and sold.

Trea Lillecrapp in the flying saucer house in Melbourne Street, 1971.

Derek Jolly in 1957.

The building caused something of a stir among residents in North Adelaide at the time, who felt it did not fit with the character of the area (I think I see their point).

You may remember the building, but how many people know about the man who was behind it. Derek Jolly was a remarkable businessman and car enthusiast who had many interests, including photography, music, science and technology, the arts and fine wine.

His lifelong interest in wine no doubt came from his mother’s side of the family. As a Penfold, she grew up in the Barossa Valley and her family was responsible for creating one of Australia’s most famous labels, and indeed one of the world’s most celebrated wines, Penfolds Grange.

In his younger years, Derek got to work alongside Max Schubert, legendary founder and maker of the Grange.

Derek’s mother’s wealth gave him the opportunity to indulge in his passions, and indulge he did.

From the early ’50s, he became one of Australia’s most prominent racing car drivers. He built and raced several of his own cars, called the Decca, eventually winning the 1960 Australian Tourist Trophy in a Lotus 15.

This led to him becoming a regular member of the Lotus Racing Team, working on the development of their cars and touring the European racing circuits, rubbing shoulders with drivers such as Stirling Moss and Graham Hill.

Derek Jolly next to a racing car in 1956.

Diners eating at Decca’s Place restaurant in Melbourne Street. Date unknown

Back in Adelaide in the mid-’60s, he built Gamba Studios in Decca’s Place, his development in Melbourne St. The state-of-the-art recording studios were fitted out with the highest quality recording equipment available.

Derek encouraged an “open-door’’ policy, inviting musicians and performers to use the studios to experiment with their music.

To that end, he imported a Moog synthesiser, which was a groundbreaking piece of music technology for that era. It was the first time such equipment was available outside the US and was made available freely for use by musos and the students of the Adelaide Conservatorium of Music.

Adelaide musician Phil Cunneen used the Moog synthesiser in 1969, when it cost $10,000, watched by Derek Jolly.

He envisaged Decca’s Place as a cultural centre and his drive and enthusiasm was largely responsible for the development of Melbourne St and what we see there even today: shops and offices, apartments, boutiques and trendy restaurants.

Though he lost most of his properties and fortune in the stockmarket crash of 1987, Derek continued to be a force in the arts.

In 1996, he and his wife Helen moved back to the Barossa Valley and opened the Multimedia Gallery. They were also instrumental in establishing the annual Barossa Music Festival, which is held each October.

Derek Jolly in 1994. With his fortune lost, he was working out of his car.

Derek died in 2002, aged 74. His death was the result of serious injuries sustained in a horrific car crash 12 months earlier when an out-of-control car slammed into his stationary vehicle at 90km/h.

In the late ’80s, the spaceship building or Futuro site was bought for the construction of an apartment building.

As a result, the Futuro was relocated to Provost St in the carpark behind Decca’s restaurant.

It stayed there for a number of years before moving again, this time to its present site, a remote location on the Heysen Trail at Blowhole Creek on the Fleurieu Peninsula.

The Futuro house where it is today — on the Fleurieu Peninsula. Pic: choppy123

On the Adelaide Remember When Facebook site, some of our readers recalled the spaceship quite well.

Others started to doubt that it ever existed because it was such an unusual building.

One reader recalled “remember it well because I was a little girl and my father drove past it one day and told me that it was a real spaceship.

“I could hardly wait to go to school the next day to share this amazing news with my friends”. Another wrote: “I’ve spoken to friends and colleagues about this building and none of them can remember it.

“I was starting to doubt that it ever existed and was just a figment of my own imagination.”

Recently on the ABC’s Radio National website, there was a brief article on the Futuro and Derek was remembered as “a visionary who was determined to establish Adelaide as a progressive city with a cutting edge arts culture”.

Bob Byrne is the author of Adelaide Remember When and posts memories of Adelaide every day on Facebook.com/AdelaideRememberWhen/