DREAM HOME

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 September 1940, Page 2

DREAM HOME

BECOMES MILITARY HOSPITAL. SYDNEY, September 5. The palatial “dream home” built at Gordon, a select Sydney suburb, by John Woolcott Forbes, the Sydney financier, in the days when- he did not have to hide from, the police, has been bought by the Red Cross for a military conyalescent hospital. The home cost Forbes at least £60,000; the Red Cross Society paid only a third of that amount to the liquidator of one of the Forbes companies. A request by the Defence Department that 30 beds should be provided for convalescent soldiers caused the society to buy the home, which will at first accommodate 110 patients. Extensions will enable it to accommodate from 220 to 250 patients later. Set in five acres of gardens, the three-storeyed house has 30 rooms. There are five luxurious bathrooms in black onyx and silver, pink, blue, green, and white tiles. Other fittings include a cream tiled swimming pool 66ft by 24ft, with purifying plant and under-water lighting; a ballroom with orchestral dais and bar; a gymnasium, Summer tea-house, bird sanctuary, fish ponds, turf tennis court, and nursery.

Soldiers who prefer Nature to luxury may descend from the loggia by broad curved terraces to a stream crossed by rustic bridges and flanked by giant tree ferns and native flowers. The superintendent of the Red Cross Society, Mr H. L. Pitt, states that the mansion is ideal for the purpose, and little alteration will be needed to turn it into a convalescent home. At present, the house is unoccupied and unfurnished, and is in the charge of a caretaker. The furnishing for its new purpose will be a simple matter.