MOT Tour Day 70 - Lyons Home Hill

Tomorrow ...

It was back to Jacqueline’s this morning for a coffee to start the day before a drive to the southern suburbs and Home Hill, the married home of Joe and Enid Lyons. Earlier in the Tour, at Stanley, we had visited the birth home of Australia’s 10th Prime Minister. This proved to be something very different.

Enid had come from a small village near Smithton, about 40kms from where Joe was born. Her father was a devil-may-care drinker described as a “swashbuckler” at the time. Her mother was the opposite, insistent on her girls being competent musicians and conversationalists and to have an education.

When Enid met Joe, she was roughly half his age and a member of the state parliament - he would go to be Premier before the move to Canberra - but they fell heavily for each other and would remain besotted throughout their quarter of a century marriage before Joe died in office of a heart attack at the premature age of 59. This only months after begging his party to let him stand down but being talked into another twelve months.

The house on Home Hill is almost all distinctly Enid. It not only has her unique decorating style but so many quirky structural innovations that she not only thought of herself but in almost all cases, did the actual work. The Lyons had no domestic staff, despite Joe’s seven years in the PM’s chair or the seven years Enid sat in the House of Representatives in Canberra (the first female to do so) and despite raising eleven children.

There are four places in the house where Enid decided she wanted to change the traffic flow or purpose of a room. Rather than wall the doorway up, she converted into a glass doored cabinet. There are windows in the most unusual of places, such as a long narrow window above a bookcase to change the lighting in the library. One of the bedrooms has an entire wall converted to cupboards but it’s the wall the doorway is in, so that from the doorway, the room appears to have no cupboards. Outside, dry stone walls have been erected around natural ponds. The stone, made from the bedrock basalt, has been chipped and split down to size. Enid did all the work herself. Same with the second hand furniture she populated the house with. She researched - in the days before Google - and did the work herself.

The library with its repurposed door
in the corner.

They were close friends of America’s reigning Roosevelts and the King and his family in England. Whilst he was respected by other politicians, he was not particularly close with many. The ALP despised him for leaving the party when he was PM and the conservatives didn’t really trust him for the same reason.

All agreed that Enid was the powerhouse driving the more affable and forgiving Joe.

When Joe died, Enid - by then Dame Enid - was sat down to start the planning for his state funeral. Her response was to fly into a rage. “You’ve had him for the last seven years. Now he’s mine.” He would be buried simply, with his family around him. Soon after, her own “official” career started in politics.

Our guide, Derek, retold their lives well, using some facts but many anecdotes which gave the experience colour and a true reflection of how “ordinary” they both were. The house remains as it was when Enid died, not how it has been coloured up with facsimiles.

It was one of the better tours of significant houses in history we have experienced.

Click here for today's photos.

The rest of the day was wasted but it’s of no consequence at this stage of the Tour. A visit to a steam train museum fell through when it was closed. A visit to an arboretum met a similar fate because the volunteers managing on the day didn’t have access to card readers for the day: plus we re-met a couple I wasn’t keen on. Sue went off to find some alleged platypus and believes she saw them … but no pictures were submitted in evidence. Doesn't mean she didn't see them. If I had a dollar for every spot we were guaranteed to see a platypus because yesterday the bloke on site 23 had seen one there ... I went back to the car to sulk.

Last day in Tassie tomorrow. We sail on the return voyage tomorrow night.