Restoration Australia Season 3 Episode 1 - Milton Terrace

Milton Terrace at Millers Point in Sydney was sold off for $4.25M in 2015 as part of the NSW Government's disposal of 300 public housing buildings. For property developer Michael Stokes, it's a Mayfair terrace in the making.

Restoration Australia has come up with a Season 3 - and the first instalment could have been all about actual heritage conservation; but it isn't. On Sunday at 7.41pm or thereabouts, or on ABC iview

It shows what money can buy. $4.25 million to get what had been saved from demolition through one of the greatest achievements of social activism by the community and union movement in the 1960s and 70s. Then another $5 million to turn it into a trophy house.

The last 60 years of its history are skimmed through as a bit of colour in about 30 seconds without naming them, this half minute about one and an half minutes in bypasses the creation of public housing for wharfies families in a less than desirable area, the Sydney Cove Development Authority's plans to raze the Rocks and build high rise offices (Harry Seidler's being one scheme), the campaign to stop demolition by resident action groups and the green bans of Jack Mundy's BLF, creating more public housing by a different more sympathetic and community focussed government, and the ultimate forced evictions by Pru Goward of the NSW Liberal government and selloff of both the preserved historic terraces and the modern brutalist Sirius building.  For more see the doco "On the Rocks"

The new owner is a millionaire property developer, so I guess it comes full circle. Milton Terrace was built by property developer Donald Lanarch in the 1870s. He was son-in-law of wealthy merchant and banker William Walker who built the original house on the site. The head of the Sydney Cove Development Authority, Owen McGee, was the uber-developer, who conceived  the idea for the total destruction of the historic precinct, and incidentally he was uncle of neo-conservative media person Miranda Devine,who described the area prior to the government evictions as a rundown hovel full of entitled housos living off Centrelink. 

But another form of restoration is happening. Like Charles II returning from exile, the rightful heirs to Millers Point, and new occupants of the Jewell of the central Sydney heritage buildings, remake their palace in the style of the Sun King, or perhaps a minor Ceaușescu relative. Originally the homes of wealthy merchants, Milton Terrace lost its prestige when the dominance of the area by industry, shipping and the bridge, saw the wealthy and middle class flee the plague ridden inner city to the more salubrious north shore, made accessible by the bridge that destroyed many poorer people's homes.

Heritage architect Tasman Storey doesn't take the bait when Harrison pushes the line about restrictive heritage controls and the massive conservation plan, explaining that the owners can create bathrooms and kitchens to their own taste (but not necessarily his) as they please, and that the place was rebuilt "quite well as a superficial copy" after destruction by fire, so they have a certain freedom to fiddle with the fabric. It is a shame that heritage regulation is constantly presented in these shows as a negative to be overcome, or as a barrier to creativity and obstructing the personal desires of the owners. 

The heritage impact statement, available for the terrace at the other end of the row has a very short and succinct few pages of guidelines that are hardly onerous. but apparently because they're "not allowed to touch the original floor at all" to get a level surface they pour down a rubber self levelling compound and on top put a plywood subfloor and lay the new timber floor on that. But a slightly uneven patched original timber floor has its own aesthetic value, just not one appreciated by these lovers of shiny surfaces.

Special, $200 a bucket, citrus-based paint stripper has to be used to remove all the layers of paint. Or they could have just painted over again and accepted the uneven surfaces that age creates. They never expect it to be so bad, and uncovering one bit, like pulling off the render for the new glass lift, reveals more unexpected problems. Since they admit it is the same for all these heritage buildings, is this just a ploy by contractors who quote low, and then demand variations?

Archaeologist Dr Wayne Johnson reveals the terrace encapsulates William Walker's earlier grand gentleman's mansion of the 1820s. But the interior designer only sees the unique surviving ancient sandstone kitchen fire place as a constraint on her preferred plans, and is disappointed she can't put the living room ceiling rose somewhere else, but has to replace it where it came from. Storey prevails with at least some of these details.

Harrison gets excited about the opening up of the rooms and exposure of its 19th century character, but it is only brief, it will all get filled with the latest interior style. Of all the people on the site, the ones with the greatest sensitivity and appreciation of heritage fabric are the bricklayers and chippies who recognise that "we don't build things the same as this anymore".

Harrison goes all the way to the domed reading room of the State Library Victoria to handle a photo in nitrile gloves, when he could have just done a search on Trove:

Then off to the Archives to learn about plague and rats from City of Sydney Historian, Laila Ellmoos, (who for some reason is only given a first name). A little while later, after more issues with heritage problems, we are told that "the social profile of this part of the city has changed dramatically ... but that is to be expected as public housing falls into the hands of people with money and their own distinctive personal taste." Class is at the root of heritage. There is a general and possibly instinctive desire to conserve the past, to maintain the familiar physical and social environment but as everyone has different priorities and different views about what it means to conserve, some people are preferenced in this process, and it is usually those with money.

Harrison is pleased the stucco, scoring, and finishes and the painting has been beautifully handled, even though externally it hardly looks any different, apart from it has lost its Valhalla name and regained Kindale, presumably from some unstated historical research (the CMP however calls it "Ballara").

The gold silk wallpaper, chandeliers, lacquered and Japanned cabinetwork, gold fittings and marble floors are all befitting the bankers and merchant princes that run the world today, but like about half of all the Restoration Australia episodes, this one is more about interior decorating than heritage conservation, despite how much the host tries to remind us of the need to preserve the past.

PS others also find the 'restoration' less than Burra Charter   https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/16574534?page=1