Loggan Rock

The Sydney region has been populated by indigenous Australians for at least 40,000 years. At the time the British arrived, there were three different language groups in the Sydney region; these were further refined into dialects spoken by smaller clans. The principal language of Northern Sydney, where Avalon Beach is located, was Guringai. Much evidence of millennia of Aboriginal habitation remains, especially their rock etchings in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park which borders Pittwater's western side.^[2][1]

The Pittwater Shire was named after an estuary of Broken Bay which the shire surrounds. Broken Bay forms the mouth of the Hawkesbury River, the main river which formed the Cumberland Plain and Sydney basin. Pittwater was discovered in 1788, the year the first British colony was established in Australia. Pittwater was named in about 1800 by the colony's first Governor, Governor Phillip, honouring the then British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger. Phillip called it "the finest piece of water I ever saw". . . Up until the early part of the 20th century, the area was primarily used for either agriculture or leisure activities. Its pristine beaches were popular for holidays and a number of camping areas, and later caravan parks, were established on or near Pittwater. After World War I, early urban settlement patterns were beginning to develop although most of the area's urbanisation occurred after the second world war with major home building activity occurring the full length of the Pittwater peninsula. The Pittwater shire is now the northernmost shire of Sydney's coastal metropolitan areas.^[1]

The land on which Loggan Rock now stands was part of the original 113.31-hectare (280.0-acre) grant of land to John Joseph Therry in 1837. In 1924 a 14.56-hectare (36.0-acre) parcel of land with road, including part of the Loggan Rock land, was subdivided and sold to Ernest Ebenezer Way who further subdivided the land and in 1928 sold Lot 179 and 180 DP to Harold Kent.^[1]

By 1932 the land on which Loggan Rock is sited was part of six residential lots, Lots 175 to 180 in 1932. Kent sold Lot 175 to Charles Berry Grieve in 1932 and Alexander Stewart Jolly commenced the design and construction of Careel House on that parcel of land. Careel House was completed in 1934 but during its construction, Jolly set about building the Loggan Rock holiday cabin on Lot 179 - 180 for his friend the film censor, Lionel Hurley. This land was subsequently sold to Alfred Dangar Burne and Hurley did not have legal possession of the land until 1937 when he finally had purchased and consolidated Lots 176 to 180 which then became Lot 4 DP 420717.^[1]

The log cabin, Loggan Rock was completed in 1931 and in 1934 the stone tower was constructed. The tower contains a laundry bathroom on the lower level and two bedrooms on the first and second levels. The house remained in Hurley's ownership until 1950 when Loggan Rock was purchased by the artist and sculptor, John Bonar Dunlop and his wife Hilary, a talented dancer with the Bodenweiser Dance Company. In 1950s the Dunlops added a kitchen, dining and lounge room to the tower building. The tower was refurbished at the time. In December 1959 the land was transferred to Dr. Herbert Sheridan, an Avalon dentist. He in turn sold to Jan Smith and Greg Saunders who restored the property, then sold to the present owners Gerry and Regina Sutton in 2003.^[1]

Alexander Stewart Jolly was born in 1887 at Mearsham Valem near Lismore. He joined the family business where he learned the skills of timber milling, building and furniture making. In 1904 his brother travelled to America where he brought back news of the latest materials and developments in the building and timber industry. This was to prove a seminal influence in the development of Jolly's architectural style. In 1908 he found a job with the Sydney architecture firm Wardell & Denning and during this time completed Clunes Coronation Hall. Between 1912 and 1917 Jolly returned to Lismore and designed a number of well regarded buildings in the north coast region including St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Casino, St Mary's Roman Catholic Convent and St Bartholomew's Anglican Church in Alstonville.^[1]

On his return to Sydney in 1918 he worked in his own practice in the city. Between 1918 and 1923 when he retired due to ill health he designed Belvedere, 7 Cranebrook Ave, Cremorne which is regarded as an exemplar of the Australian idiom of the Californian Bungalow style of American architects, Charles and Henry Green. This is one of only two Jolly residence listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register, the other being Hy Brasil at Avalon (as the suburb was known until its name change to Avalon Beach in 2012). Two other residences, Nebraska, built in 1919 and Noonee, built in 1923 demonstrate the further development of Jolly's interest in the Federation Arts and Crafts architecture. Although influenced by the American idiom his designs in this period were "never a parroting of current popular trends. while his ideas may have been launched from ideas assimilated from abroard, they were quickly changed, added to and interpreted to make them distinctively his own and wholly the work of a highly creative mind".^{[according to whom?][3][1]}

His unusual use of timber and stone rubble external features and his idiosyncratic inglenook design in these early houses mark the beginnings of the more dramatic expression of his organic architecture of the later 1920s and early 1930s in structures such as Loggan Rock. The catalyst for Jolly's commitment to an imaginative and organic style of architecture which grows out of and in harmony with nature may have been his illness and retirement from office based architecture in 1923. After his retirement he eschewed the "rushing hell"^{[citation needed]} of the city in favour of the calm of the bush. In fact, a passage from Jolly's children's book, "The Spirit of the Bush", could describe Jolly's state of mind and intentions at the time of his retirement.^[1]

"A man was once very tired and weary of the city. His business had failed and he was reduced to his last few pounds. This worried him, so he decided to give all the money he had to his wife and asked her to make it last as long as possible."^[1][4]

"I will go into the bush and seek for gold as there is no work to be had in the city... He thought as he as he walked along of the many disappointments in his life and felt that at last he was doing the right thing in going away."

Jolly went to Avalon in the late 1920s and teamed up with A. E. Dalwood real estate developer offering his services to design homes for those who bought the newly subdivided land on the peninsular. During commissions he camped at Avalon and developed highly detailed drawings of the houses before they were built. The detailed placement of stone and timber in these structures and especially in the detailed inglenooks the houses incorporated was so important to Jolly that he often resorted to constructing these details himself, selecting particular stones and branches and placing them into the construction exactly where they should be. The initial studies and their final built expression are a testament to Jolly's ingenuity and creativity.^[5][1]

During this period Jolly designed and built:

• Loggan Rock (1931, 1934), an imaginative expression of organic architecture in a log and rock cabin
• the more sedate Careel House, reminiscent of a Scottish castle (1934)
• Stonehaven, a unique stone rubble cabin (1933), and
• Hy Brasil, another bush cabin in a harmonious construction of stone and timber (1933).^[1]

It has been noted that these houses marked a renewal of and radical departure in Jolly's architecture which included number of 'stone and timber houses incorporating natural rocks, tree trunks, logs with bark still clinging and forked branches. These were built into strangely organic and often whimsical forms, resembling boulders or animals... rather than the angles and planes of conventional architecture".^[6][1]

Lionel Hurley, the first owner of Loggan Rock was one of the early film censors who established the regulation of the then infant Australian Film Industry. During the period of Lionel Hurley's ownership of the Loggan Rock cabin there were a number of high-profile figures who retreated there including film maker Frank Hurley. Hurley importance as a film maker and photographer is derived from his photographic documentation of the Mawson and Shackleton and Antarctic Expedition and as official photographer in the Middle East during both World Wars as well as a maker of many well known documentary and feature films during the 1930s.^[1]

Like Loggan Rock's owner Lionel Hurley, Frank gained a reputation as the generous host of many uproarious parties attended by well known figures in the theatre, film making and artistic circles. Guests of these two men included "Mr RKO", Ralph Doyle the film distributor and his wife, Patricia Minchin whose fame as a photographic model was sealed with the launch of the ubiquitous advertising campaign featuring Patricia as the face of the Atlantic Ethyl oil company. Ken Hall, writer and director of the ubiquitous Dad and Dave series of movies and important pioneer in the Australian film industry was also a regular guest at Loggan Rock.^[1]

Prior to World War II other well known Sydneysiders took advantage of the cabin and its facilities. It was a regular weekend retreat for Margaret Jay, a successful interior designer, and Elisabeth MacIntyre, the prolific children's writer and artist. The stream of well known visitors of an artistic bent continued in the 1950s when Loggan Rock was owned by artist Bonar Dunlop and his wife who entertained renowned contemporaries such as the Archibald prize winning and noted World War II artist Arthur Murch. These owners built the 1950s extension based on a design by Max Collard, although the extension was changed in its execution.^[1]

Loggan Rock is located on a rocky outcrop on Careel Head. The site contains a number of important elements including: a log cabin on a base of random stone blocks; an adjoining 1934 residence formed by a random rubble stone tower with 1950s extension; and unique garden; they are organised into a series of intimate spaces, courtyards, terraces, viewing platforms, walls, steps and pathways carefully integrated into the rock outcrops and mature trees of the natural bushland setting. Paths and steps twist up the steep hill slope. There are numerous stone benches, placed to capture views and spots of sunlight, to encourage thinking and communing with nature. Other sculptured elements of high creative accomplishment providing rich sensory experiences that form part of the total landscape setting include: a sandstone seating niche below the massive sandstone chimney of the cabin; the pier forming veranda post, a sandstone flagged terrace with four sandstone piers (minus pergola) with a sandstone table surrounded by seating height sandstone rubble wall; external fireplace (between the cabin and the residence); corbelled stone planting box; internal stair cut into bedrock, three internal fireplaces in the residence. Mature trees, native bushland including rock orchids (Dendrobium speciosum) have been retained. The garden is a distinct departure from the formal axially arranged gardens prevalent during the 1920s and 1930s.^[1]

Loggan Rock is constructed in two main sections, a log cabin separated entirely from a tower building with a 1954 extension (the designer of the 1954 section is unknown at present). The building grows upwards on its steep site from a base of random stone blocks. These support a massive stone chimney, structural posts made from hefty bush trunks and a gabled roof, reminiscent of the forms Jolly used in his bungalow houses^[7] The roof of the cabin is shingled, its veranda propped at one end on a shapely tree trunk and branch. 'Walls are infilled with round logs, bark still intact - horizontally laid as in old Australian slab cottages, vertically fixed like the walls of slab or miner's huts or New Guinea long houses or wildly angled with their own geometrical inspiration.' Tree branches form the windows with the glass panes set into forks between the branches.^[7][1]

The interior plan of the cabin is roughly cruciform in shape, on the west side is an inglenook and the fireplace is surmounted by a massive stone chimney, this is reflected on the eastern side by a bay lined with seats leading out through doors which open onto the sunny paved space behind the cabin. On the south a run of windows provide views out towards Avalon, at the other a gallery is accessed by a stepladder with rope baluster. Beneath the gallery a pair of massive boarded, planked and studded doors provide access to a sandstone flagged veranda with views down the valley.^[1]

"The interior is designed to encourage its occupants to sit and chat. Built-in rustic furniture is virtually all that is required to furnish the room. Stone benches are slotted into the walls, gathered around the fireplace inglenook or facing into the room. A giant banksia trunk is sliced across to form a table, its polished surface branching out into the shape of boughs. Shelving is built into the walls. The fireplace nook not only invites a cosy confluence of guests to warm hands and smoke pipes, the windows to either side of the chimney flue provide views and lighten the interior, encouraging gathering at any season. To either side of the inglenook, stone bastions convey the solidarity of the typical heath - their heavy pillar-like forms outlined in chunks of stone which are interspersed with an intricate jigsaw pattern of multicoloured sandstone rocks"^{[according to whom?][8][1]}

The "Loggan Rock" tower building and 1954 extension are superbly sited with windows contrived to overlook Whale Beach and the Pacific Ocean, Avalon, Careel Bay and Pittwater. The angled 1950s living room provides views in all directions. These additions have been attributed to the time that Hillary and John Bonar Dunlop owned the property. The additions are single storey and include a bathroom, kitchen, kitchen inglenook, dining room and living room incorporating the 1934 tower. The additions are constructed of vertical timber weatherboard cladding on a timber frame onto of a rubble sandstone base that retains the rock outcrop, the living room cantilevering out over the rock formation.^[1]

The tower and its additions feature a flat roof. Wide ventilated timber eaves along the north, east and west elevations of the 1954 addition protect the large plate glass windows and doors opening onto the upper terrace and extending the internal space. The additions are a rare example of a blend of post war international and regional style residential architecture.^[1]

The strongly vertical tower contrasts with the log cabin. It is a severe stone block structure (with small projecting sandstone lintel hoods over the windows) cut into the bedrock from which it emerges and from which the sandstone blocks were quarried. The cabin dates from 1929 and the adjoining tower from 1934.^[1]

Individual components assessed as having Exceptional Significance are the Log Cabin, the Tower, the garden setting and the Banksia Table.^[1]

As at 26 April 2006, the buildings and garden were in good physical condition having recently been restored by the previous owners Jan Smith and Greg Saunders. The shingle roof has been renewed. The garden has been cleared of weeds and is well maintained, all walls, paths steps and terraces and sandstone features are now visible and in good condition. Investigation of its indigenous archaeological potential has not formed part of the research.^[1]

The place is substantially intact, with minor alterations to the buildings and garden having been restored in 2002–2003.^[1]

• 1929 Log cabin construction began
• 1931 Completion of Log Cabin
• 1934 Completion of the Tower
• 1954 Completion of modernist extension to the Tower.^[1]

"Loggan Rock" is adjacent to and north of "Careel House", 105a Whale Beach Road, Whale Beach also designed by Alexander Stewart Jolly for Major & Mrs C. R. Grieve. They believed^{[by whom?]} to be the earliest dwellings on Careel Headland.^[1]