Many renovations resemble a bomb site. This Sydney home really was one

In the Grand Designs pantheon of things that can go wrong in a reno, nothing compares with finding a live bomb in the backyard of your home in Sydney’s eastern suburb of Bellevue Hill.

Except discovering more unexploded munitions and a Bakelite grenade too dangerous to move.

One of the unexploded bombs found in the garden of Rebecca Michelides’ Bellevue Hill home during a renovation.

Today, the newly renovated 1915 arts and crafts home with its triangular two-storey roof, white shingles and old-fashioned garden is the sweetest of homes, says its award-winning architect Hannah Tribe, principal of Tribe Studio Architects. It is probably the safest too.

But when Tribe started the renovation four years ago for her clients, lawyers Rebecca Michelides and Glen Sauer, they got their first surprise.

The family’s century-old house did not have a stormwater drain, and they were not permitted to connect to the neighbours’ stormwater drain. Woollahra Council required them to dig an expensive 65,000-litre underground stormwater tank.

Michelides said it was so big “you could live in it in a nuclear war”.

Rebecca Michelides at her home with architect Hannah Tribe, who says the kitchen island’s legs are a playful tribute to the uncovered bombs.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Then came the next bad news.

“It was a Friday night, and the builder called, and he said, ‘Look, we’ve just been excavating, and we’ve just found this thing that, we think, might be a bomb.’ I said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ He sent me a photo, and it did look a bit like one. It was quite surreal.”

The discovery stopped work on site. NSW Police were notified. They told the Australian Army, who confirmed it was a bomb that had to be taken away. Defence personnel arrived that weekend with metal detectors and found more unexploded bombs, including smaller smoke bombs and larger mortar bombs about 40 centimetres long. They were taken to Holsworthy Barracks for controlled detonation.

“They were all rusty, but they were live,” Michelides said.

Built in 1915, the Bellevue Hill home is a heritage-listed example of arts and craft style architecture. Credit: Ben Hoskings

When work resumed the following Monday, more bombs were found, and a grenade that could not be moved because it was disintegrating.

“That was a horrible moment,” Michelides said. “It was volatile, and they had to explode it on site. They came to do the control detonation, at which point the neighbours had to be warned to stay inside. They buried [the grenade] in sand, and it went off with a loud, muffled bang.”

Bellevue Hill was shelled by two miniature Japanese submarines in June 1942, and a range of exploded and unexploded shells have been found in 11 properties in streets near the Michelides’ home.

But the munitions found in their home came from another source: It is most likely that the arsenal was collected by a resident who may have been in the army reserve during World War II.

“An end-of-days prepper,” Tribe theorised. During the renovations, the family also found cigarette packets, medications, perfume bottles and newspapers from the 1930s, which are now preserved in a box of relics, along with some old artillery casings.

A deep penetration X-ray confirmed the site was finally clear of other munitions.

When Michelides first saw the house, then owned by 106-year-old Jean Kirkman who had lived there since the 1950s, she contacted Tribe for advice.

Assured it was a gem, they bought it in 2018. The family loved the heritage-listed home so much that they lived in it for two years without touching it. Not much had changed since it was built, except a couple of additions and a fiercely hot kitchen added to the back of the home.

Tribe said Michelides’ love of the home’s quirky and original features gave her licence to be playful. The kitchen island has bomb-shaped legs as a tribute to their discovery.

The bombs are a talking point – and Michelides said the jokes about having a blast never get old.

Tribe said, “We always warn our clients to expect the unexpected during construction. No one expected the bombs.” Once the site and onsite detonation were over, Tribe said she “redesigned the kitchen island in memory of this story … like a cartoon of the bomb we excavated.”

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