Inside the Boy Swallows Universe $395k shack

The Netflix series Boy Swallows Universe has scooped up four Logies with a humble $395k Aussie shack helping set the award winning scene.

(L to R) Gus Bell (Lee Halley), Slim Halliday (Bryan Brown) and Eli Bell (Felix Cameron) in a scene from Boy Swallows Universe

The Netflix series Boy Swallows Universe has scooped up four Logies with a humble $395k Aussie shack helping set the award winning scene.

In the hit series, a post-war rental house built on the outskirts of the city in 1950 was transformed into the home of Eli, the show’s 12-year-old protagonist.

The seven-part series, set in the 1980s and based on Trent Dalton’s best-selling book, was shot entirely across Brisbane’s suburbs in 2022. The gritty yet warm semi-biographical story made Netflix’s global top five in its debut week in January.

Eli’s childhood home depicted in Boy Swallows Universe. Photo: Supplied/Netflix

The Beenleigh house is now rented for $440 a week

A scene from the TV series starring Travis Fimmel as Lyle Orlik.

A three-bedder in the Logan suburb of Beenleigh served as Eli and brother Gus’ childhood home. It underwent a retro interior makeover, was painted blue, and had a patio and fence added by production crews.

Property records show the house last sold for $395,000 in 2015.

It was listed again for $426,000 in 2018, but put into the rental pool when it didn’t sell.

Weekly rent was $310 in 2016, jumping to $440 in February 2023 when it was last rented by Donna Starkins of Remax Revolution.

The original retro kitchen

Classic hills hoist in the backyard

PropTrack data shows the median house price in Beenleigh is $590,000 – up 7.3 per cent in the past 12 months. Average weekly rent increased 9.3 per cent to $470 in December 2023.

Ms Starkins said the house was repainted in cream following its starring role before being leased to the current tenants.

“From what I’ve heard there are people driving past to see it,” she said.

Across town on an elevated double block in Wavell Heights, a cream-and-green house with bay windows and a poinciana tree out the front became the boys’ father Robert’s home. A grand Queenslander with a pool and tennis court in the blue-ribbon streets of Chelmer featured when Eli and Gus went with their stepfather Lyle to buy a second-hand Atari game consule.

The Stones Corner Freemasons building was used as The Courier-Mail headquarters, shortly before it was demolished.

The style was typical of social housing built in the 1950s and 60s

Architectural historian Marianne Taylor, of The House Detective, said the Beenleigh home was typical of the austere style of the 1950s and 60s and was likely built as social housing.

“Because there was such a shortage of material and labour after the second world war, they were just building functional houses as quickly as possible,” Ms Taylor said.

“Although they used a house at Beenleigh in the series, it it exactly the type of cookie-cutter house that would have been at Darra, where the book was set.”

She said the streetscapes and moments in time captured by the series would resonate with generations of Queenslanders.

Architectural historian Marianne Taylor. Picture: Liam Kidston.

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“I think a lot of people can relate to that working-class style of living that was captured, and for me it is so refreshing to see the lower socioeconomic housing that I also grew up in portrayed on screen,” Ms Taylor said.

While the secret escape room behind a cupboard that was central to Dalton’s plot was not a common architectural feature of the era, the outhouse to which that room was connected via a dusty crawl space was.

“The old outhouse was in every backyard and a lot of houses into the 1980s in Brisbane still had dunnies in the backyard, so that blows my mind,” Ms Taylor said.

The Wavell Heights house usedfor Eli and Gus' father Robert's house in Boy Swallows Universe

The style is typical of more upmarket houses built in the 1930s

Original built-in kitchen cabinetry

Rachael Radulovic, cofounder of location hire platform Aloca, said original and older-style homes were in “high demand” with hourly rates typically ranging from $100 to $400 a hour.

“We find many TV commercials and some TV series, especially Australian dramas, prefer the authentic charm and character that retro suburbia homes bring to their productions,” Ms Radulovic said.

Dalton’s real-life childhood home was in the northern Brisbane suburb of Bracken Ridge, while today he lives at The Gap.

This traditional Queenslander house at Chelmer also featured in the series

The Freemasons building at Stones Corner has been demolished

The Beenleigh house was described in the rental listing as a “neat and tidy Queenslander” with three spacious bedrooms and a sunroom at the entry, large bathroom, open-plan eat-in kitchen, huge yard and a double carport.

It is located close to shops, schools, a bowls club and a railway station.

The area has gained traction due to its affordability, with priced-out first-home buyers and investors looking further from the CBD to get on the property ladder.

Originally published as Inside the Boy Swallows Universe $395k shack