Inside the opulent Melbourne mansion gardens you’ve probably never seen
It is one of the city’s oldest and most elegant homes, owned for almost a hundred years by one of its most prominent families. Here is your chance to look at the Myer family’s Cranlana mansion hidden in one of Toorak’s most prestigious streets.
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Hidden behind heavy gates and tree-lined walls, the Cranlana mansion on perhaps the most prestigious residential street in Melbourne has always been discreet in revealing its secrets.
Along with the 1867 Italianate mansion, Coonac, owned by millionaire businessman and former Essendon Football Club chairman Paul Little, the Myer family-owned Cranlana makes Toorak’s Clendon Rd a go-to for tours sneaking peeks at the city’s gilded-era mansions.
But as the youngest daughter of Sidney and Merlyn Myer, Lady Marigold Southey simply knew the Cranlana house, and the streets around it, as home.
After a commission from the Myer family, led by Southey and her brother Baillieu Myer, the house is being opened up to the public via Michael Shmith’s new hardcover volume Cranlana: The First 100 Years.
The house is now a home for the family’s philanthropic ventures, including the Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership, and remains a centre for family events.
And Southey still walks her Jack Russell terriers Tom and Georgie around the gardens every afternoon.
The tale behind Cranlana and its gardens is as fascinating as any work of fiction.
The family often traces it to 1899, when a 21-year-old Russian, Simcha Baevski, arrived at the Port of Melbourne to build a new life.
Starting with a small drapery business in Bendigo, he would found a business that would include his new name Sidney Myer.
Success saw him buy an established retail business in Bourke St in 1911, which would be renamed The Myer Emporium and become famous.
But it was when he met the love of his life Margery Merlyn Baillieu — of Melbourne’s famous Baillieu family — that set him on the path to establishing Cranlana.
The couple married in January 1920 and registered interest in a Toorak residence, Torrie, eventually to be renamed Cranlana, at 62 Clendon Rd.
The house has grabbed public attention throughout Southey’s 91 years. When her mother had the gardens designed — transforming it from basically a paddock — they were finished in early 1934 and featured — twice — in Home Beautiful.
But, of course, this mattered very little to a six-year-old Marigold who had a colourful new world open up for her.
“It was a fantastic place to play,” Southey says of her childhood experiences.
“My older siblings didn’t have as much fun in the garden as I had.
“The walls, you weren’t allowed to touch the ground, you had to jump across the openings in the walls which was quite difficult for a six year old. As I got older, it got easier.
“And, of course, there were trees to climb, fantastic trees to climb. The camphor laurel was the favourite.”
But it wasn’t long after the gardens were complete that tragedy struck the family. Merlyn was left with sole responsibility for the house — and a young family — after the sudden death of Sidney in 1934 at the age of 56.
His friend Sir Robert Menzies thought of Sidney as a “great man” and said he remembered him “standing with a fire in his eye before the great cases of jade” at Cranlana.
The house has also been the place where the family has marked important events.
“My elder sister Neilma was the first to be married here in 1942 and me in 1950, and we have another one coming up at the end of November — one of my grandsons.”
Southey’s introduction to the world of gala balls and social events was by peering through the banisters at parties.
“Ken and Neilma were my older siblings and when I was about 10 or 11 they were 17, 18. So they would have parties here in the ballroom and I wasn’t allowed in and I’d be hanging over the stairs and listening to it all.”
But when WWII came, everything changed.
Her sister got married and moved to America, while her mother Merlyn gave the house to the American defence forces to use during the war.
“My mother moved out and first gave the house to the American navy to Admiral Nimitz who fought the battle of the Coral Sea which turned the war around,” Southey says.
Tasked with much of the upkeep and repairs today is premises and facilities manager Peter Jones.
Aside from managing craftspeople such as stonemasons, he also seems to specialise in uncovering all manner of old possessions.
Just after starting the job, he discovered Sidney’s old safe in a cupboard, which unfortunately turned out to be empty after being prised open by a specialist safecracker. Relics from that period have also been repurposed.
An air-raid shelter built after attacks were made on Australia is now a wine cellar.
Someone who intimately knows Cranlana is the recently retired head gardener Anne Nadenbousch.
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Nadenbousch described her role as “softening” or creating a “gentler aesthetic” as she worked on the original garden, which was designed by respected architect Harold Desbrowe-Annear.
“Basically the heart of our work lay in renovating the garden beds,” Nadenbousch says in Shmith’s book.
“It was an endless job, like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge. At Cranlana there’s something different to see every day. In my time there, the season I loved the best was winter.
“The bird and the animal life in the Cranlana garden makes the place what it is.”
Southey says the house is still vibrant and not a museum, even though no one lives there and it’s used for mainly philanthropic events.
“We get asked all the time — you can’t ring up and book the house, you have to have a family member hosting,” she says.
“It’s not a function centre and that’s what’s kept the house alive.”
CRANLANA: THE FIRST 100 YEARS (HARDIE GRANT, RRP $80) IS OUT NOW