In December 2011 – A former home in Melbourne of Australia’s wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin, was sold at auction. It is a double-fronted house in Fallon Street in Brunswick and was built in 1906. Curtin lived there from 1912 to 1915. At the time, Curtin was Secretary of the Victorian Timber Workers Union, an organiser for the Australian Workers Union and was active in Australian Labor Party politics. The house retains many of its period features, having been owned by the same family since 1921. It is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. Further information, including photographs, may be found on the Property Observor website Curtin moved to Perth in 1917 to work as a journalist, and in 1923 he and his wife Elsie had built for them a house in Cottesloe, which remained his home until his death in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II.
Sources: Property Observor, Tablelands Advertiser 25 November 2011 p.21
With permission from Federation of Australian Historical Societies Inc e-BULLETIN No. 93 – 19 December 2011
