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Ulimaroa
The building
This former residence was built in 1889-90
in the Victorian Italianate style. It was probably
designed by prominent German-born
Melbourne architect John A B Koch (1845-1928)
but most probably by Leonard John Flannagan
(1864-1902). St Kilda Road was an
internationally renowned, tree-lined boulevard
dotted with large private residences leading into
Melbourne’s central business district. The
building is classified by the National Trust of
Australia and is on the Victorian Heritage
Register (H0658).
The first owner was Edwin Iredale Watkin
(1839-1916), a Wesleyan minister with a
reputed interest in early Australian and
Polynesian history and geography. Watkin was
the honorary secretary of the Victorian branch
of the Royal Geographical Society. His interest
in history and geography led him to publish a
book on Australian native names and their
meanings. Watkin most likely named the
house Ulimaroa, and his interest in flora and
fauna would explain the choice of decoration
in the painted glass panels of the entrance.
Painted glass panels on either side of the main entrance.
Watkin never lived in the house and, soon
after construction was completed, he rented
it to John Traill, the managing director of the
shipping company Huddart Parker and
Company Pty. Traill purchased the house in
1890 and it remained in the family until 1960.
The last Traill family member to live at
Ulimaroa was Dr Harvey Barrett, who used
the building as a residence and surgery. In
1960, automotive parts company Repco
Limited bought the building to use as its
headquarters. The shift from private residence
to commercial offices included extensive
cosmetic and structural changes.
From the street, the building appears to be
an intact example of a Melbourne boom-time
Italianate tower residence with its asymmetrically
placed tower, cast iron return verandah and
canted bay windows set in a substantial
garden. However during Repco’s ownership,
the original boundaries of the south and west
part of the building were altered and extended
by architects D G Lumsden and G N Sommers.
Internally, significant changes were made both
to the structure and decoration of the building
to include staff offices, a boardroom, an
executive lounge, kitchen and rear verandah.
These changes included bricking up some of
the fireplaces, demolishing a bedroom and
creating a large landing on the first floor.
Board Room with French doors opening
into the garden.
Slate slabs were replaced with encaustic tiles
on the front verandah, wood panelling was
introduced, staff quarters demolished and the
rear of the original house altered. Repco’s
architects salvaged the beautiful Tasmanian
blackwood doors, architraves and panelling
from the most extravagant Kew house Tara
Hall (formerly known as Goathland), which
was being demolished at the time, and
installed them in Ulimaroa.
More changes were made to restore elements
of the former aesthetic of the house and
garden after the purchase of the building by
the newly established Australian and New
Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA)
from Clarendon Finance in September 1993.
The College is proud to own Ulimaroa, a
building whose history, as linked to Watkin
and Traill, bears significant symbolic parallels
to the College’s Australian and New Zealand
partnership.
Despite the extensive internal cosmetic and
structural changes made to the building
during its commercial ownership, a fact that
has undermined its historical and architectural
significance, Melburnians are fortunate that
Ulimaroa remains as one of only five surviving
19th century buildings on St Kilda Road.
Main entrance stairwell.
Goathland
In 1888, George Ramsden, the former owner
of the Melbourne Paper Mill, commissioned
Kilburn (of Ellerker and Kilburn Architects that
gave us the Federal Coffee Palace) to design
and build his house Coornoor in Studley Park
Road. This was Kew’s highest point where
many wealthy Melbournians chose to build
and showcase their opulent residences.
Already standing on the extensive property
was the significant Clifton House, built by
William Stevenson, the previous land owner
and municipal mayor. This did not deter
Ramsden from having it demolished to
make way for his new home estimated to have
cost between £25,000 and £40,000. The result
was a unique if not unusual and uncommon
Elizabethan revival building that combined a
blend of architectural styles that were gaining
popularity in Britain and Australia at the time.
After Ramsden’s death in 1896, his widow
remained in the house until the 1903 sale when
this Melbournian landmark was purchased by
Malcolm McEacharn. He renamed the house
Goathland in memory of his beloved first wife’s
birthplace. A wealthy self-made man,
McEacharn was involved in shipping and
property and was a director of numerous
companies, Lord Mayor of Melbourne and
a state and federal member of parliament.
Fellows’ Room.
After retiring from a colourful, and some
would say tumultuous, career in Melbourne,
he moved to England. In early 1910, while in
the south of France, he died of a heart attack
leaving behind a messy and complicated will
requiring Mrs McEacharn to return to
Melbourne to facilitate the August 1911
sale of the vast estate.
Ownership of the house remained for an
incredibly brief time with the widow Mrs
Treadway who went on to purchase the house
for her daughter for £7500. Ten days later, the
house went up for sale again and was sold to
EF Millar for £10,000, delivering Mrs Treadway
a tidy profit. Historical reports suggest that EF
Millar did not live in the house with ownership
changing yet again when the property was
purchased in 1915 by Thomas J O’Loughlin,
who went on to change the name to Tara Hall.
Eleven years later, when the house was put up
for auction, it was estimated to have cost
£44,000 to build yet it was purchased by Dr
Edward Ryan for £10,000. The house name
was changed to Lowan only to revert back to
Tara Hall when it changed ownership again in
1941. This time it was purchased for £7000
and its function changed from private home
to ostentatious apartment housing.
John Traill on Ulimaroa grounds.
ANZCA Corporate Collection.
The Royal Women’s Hospital 1948 annual
report documents the £21,500 purchase and
£7000 refurbishment of Tara Hall to
accommodate the growing number of its
nursing staff. Following the successful change
in function and maintenance of the building
after it was left to ruin by the previous owner,
it was believed that the building would not
suffer the same fate as so many other grand
buildings had, all in the name of progress.
It is possible that due to this confidence, the
hospital decided to sell the estate, which was
purchased in August 1959 by Kenley Pty Ltd for
£28,000. Regrettably, in early 1960 the building
was demolished and the land subdivided into
seven sites, removing all physical evidence of
the once uniquely opulent Elizabethan revival
building save for the few interior blackwood
panels and fittings now gracing Ulimaroa.
John Traill
John Traill arrived in Geelong from Scotland
in early 1855 but never reached the Ballarat
goldfields where he had planned to make his
fortune. Instead he met Thomas Parker, who
was impressed by his previous shipping
experience, and eventually became one of
the four founding partners of the 1876-listed
Huddart Parker Shipping Company.
SS Ulimaroa
ANZCA Corporate Collection.
By 1910 the Huddart Parker Shipping
Company ranked 24th out of the top 100
companies in Australia. It was taken over in
September 1961 by Boral (Bitumen & Oil
Refineries Australia).
John Traill remained a director of the company
long after retiring as chairman in 1910. He and
his wife were shy people who did not engage
in the same social activities as their economic
and social peers. He died on June 27, 1918,
at the age of 92. It is said that up to the age
of 90 he continued to walk from his home,
Ulimaroa, to the offices of Huddart Parker
in Collins Street, Melbourne.
The ship
A steel twin-screw 5777-ton steamer was built
by Gourlay Brothers & Co of Dundee Scotland
and launched on July 11, 1907. On December 2,
1907, she was run aground by the pilot on the
trial voyage and was sent to Newcastle-uponTyne for repair. Finally, on January 4, 1908,
the steamer was handed over to the Huddart
Parker Shipping Company and arrived in
Melbourne on February 16, 1908. The vessel
was named Ulimaroa by John Traill, the
managing director of the Huddart Parker
Shipping Company and the first occupant
of Ulimaroa, the house.
Tupa’ia’s chart of the South Pacific.
In the early years of World War I, Ulimaroa
maintained the month-long ‘horseshoe’ service
from Melbourne to Hobart, across the Tasman
Sea to New Zealand, back to Sydney and a
clockwise return voyage back to Melbourne.
This commercial service was disrupted in
January 1916 when the vessel was requisitioned
by the New Zealand government to transport
troops to the United Kingdom, India and Egypt.
This service continued for the remainder of the
war. Having carried more than 160,000 troops
and steamed 225,000 miles without incident,
Ulimaroa returned to the trans-Tasman service
in March 1920 after being refitted in Sydney.
The vessel was laid up in January 1933 and left
Sydney on May 26, 1934, on her last voyage to
ship breakers in Kobe, Japan.
Detail from 1806 corrected Canzler’s map
showing “Ulimaroa oder Neu-Holland”.
ANZCA Corporate Collection.
The name
On his first famous voyage of the Pacific
region from 1768-71, Captain James Cook
travelled with Joseph Banks, one of two
naturalists on the Endeavour. During their
three-month stay in Tahiti in 1769, Banks
learned some Tahitian and upon their setting
off to discover new lands invited a Ra’iatean
priest, chief and pilot called Tupa’ia, who was
living in Tahiti, to join them as their guide and
interpreter through their Pacific travels and
back to England. Tupa’ia went on to draw a
map of his world covering over 4000 km of the
central Pacific and documenting almost 100
islands. He proved to be an invaluable guide
and Endeavour crewmember, which
significantly shaped the voyage outcome.
According to the official publications and
journals made during the Endeavour’s visits
to New Zealand, on December 9, 1769, at
Doubtless Bay, Banks and Tupa’ia spoke with
the local Māoris and asked them whether they
knew of or visited any other lands. They said
that many years ago their ancestors had
travelled to a large land about a month’s
canoe trip away towards the north-northwest
where the people ate pigs; they referred
to this land as “Olimaroa/Olhemaroa”.
Unique transfer glass panel leading into
the Tower Room.
This account first appeared in print in John
Hawkesworth’s 1773 rendition of the famous
journey. Interestingly Hawkesworth was not
on the journey, yet wrote the official An
Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order
of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in
the Southern Hemisphere. His account of the
conversation resulted in the name being
written down as Ulimaroa.
It was this account that the eccentric Swedish
geographer and cartographer Daniel Djurberg
referenced for his 1776 book. The name
Ulimaroa was widely used by Swedish,
German and Dutch cartographers and
continued to be used in geographical
literature until 1837. In 1795 German
cartographer Friedrich Canzler drew up a
map of the region naming the large landmass,
with Tasmania connected, “Ulimaroa oder
Neu-Holland”. This land mass was also
referred to alternatively as “Java-le-Grand” or
“Terra Australis” though Cook and Banks
preferred the name New Holland. It was not
until after Matthew Flinders circumnavigated
the land mass and wrote in 1804, “I call the
whole island Australia or Terra Australis”, and
into the early 1820s, that the name Australia
was put into common use. The fact that the
major map publisher of the day did not like
the name Australia prolonged the
establishment of its common usage.
Detail of brass door knob and key hole panel.
In 1995, the College was gifted an 1806
“corrected” edition of Canzler’s 1795 map
showing Tasmania as a separate landmass.
It is not uncommon in history to perpetuate
myths and misunderstood or misinterpreted
events and details, which in time become
documented as undisputed facts. Until
recently, scholarly attempts to explain the
origin and meaning of the word Ulimaroa had
incorrectly attributed it as an Australian
Aboriginal name. The fact that Hawkesworth
printed the spoken Māori word with an “l”
and “r” added extra confusion as there is no
“l” in the Maori language. Linguists Tent and
Geraghty, in their recent research into the
name, report that having an “l” and “r” in a
word does not mean that it cannot be a word
of Polynesian origin. It was a common error
made by Europeans when transcribing words
because the sound these letters make
changes depending on what vowel they sit
beside. Add to this the practice of adding the
article from the donor language to the
borrowed word, such as “o Tahiti” (Otaheite),
“o Porto” (Oporto), and confusion and
misdirection can result.
More confusion was added with Djuberg’s
1818 claim that the word was Māori for “big
red land”, a fact that Tent and Geraghty have
since dismissed because none of the
Board Room.
elements of the word Ulimaroa mean “red”
or “land” in Māori. There is no explanation
for why Hawkesworth replaced the “O” with
a “U” in Ulimaroa (O Rimaroa).
Through their extensive research, Tent and
Geraghty concluded that based on the
references made about the land’s distance
(a one-month canoe journey), shape (long),
direction (north-northwest) and presence of
pigs, New Caledonia is probably the island
referred to as “Rimaroa” by the Māori of
Doubtless Bay in 1769. Combined with
Tupa’ia’s extraordinary knowledge and map
of the known lands predating the arrival of
Europeans, it seems unlikely that it referred
to the landmass we know today as Australia.
Thus Edwin Iredale Watkin unwittingly,
erroneously named the house Ulimaroa in 1889
based on common knowledge and references
of the day made by many cartographers and
scholars over the years as being the continent
of Australia.
Through the scholarly work of linguists, the
myth has been explained and adds to the
intriguing history of the people, places and
events that also form part of ANZCA’s history.
Original newel post at the
main entrance stairwell.
One of the many period crystal
chandeliers and original rosette.
For further information
please contact
Geoffrey Kaye Museum
of Anaesthetic History
ANZCA House
630 St Kilda Road
Melbourne VIC 3004
Australia
T: +61 3 8517 5309
E: [email protected]
www.anzca.edu.au/
about-anzca/History
Detail of leadlight panel depicting
the ANZCA crest and coat of arms.