“HEARTBREAKING” is how owner Rose Chaney described the loss of heritage-listed Wallcliffe House and its contents – including probably the largest collection of hand-crafted jarrah furniture in the world.
She said the furniture was hand-crafted for South West pioneer Alfred Bussell and his family when they moved into Wallcliffe House in 1865 by a master craftsman called Knapton and his brother.
“We kept all of the original furniture in the original house - I think we only took two pieces into the new house, but that’s also gone,” Mrs Chaney said. “There was Alfred’s big bed, and a shorter bed – I used to put my shorter guests in that one – the big dining room table where the family ate over the years, a beautiful round table that had belonged to the Molloys.
“It was probably the largest collection of early Australian jarrah furniture in the world, and it’s all gone,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking what has been lost, there were lithographs and water colour paintings, the (Bussell) children’s tutor, a Mr Flaxman, had painted a mural on the wall of the schoolroom, and every time the room was repainted the painters painted around it, there was quite a lip at the edge from the build-up of paint.
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Mrs Chaney said there was more bad news when a 100-year-old fireproof box containing historic Bussell family documents was opened. It contained only ashes.
She said the box was found in the remains of Wallcliffe House after the bushfire had passed, but was so hot it scorched the grass when it was put on the lawn.
The box was allowed to cool for a day before it was taken to Perth and opened by a locksmith.
“The Hohnens (previous Wallcliffe owners Mark and Cate Hohnen) had handed it over and said ‘take care of this’. We kept it in the original house, we thought that was the most appropriate place for it, but it seems what was thought to be fire proof 100 years ago was not fire proof – not for a fire that hot.”
Mrs Chaney said the fire was so hot it melted glass in a window of the old dairy.
“There’s a heap of melted glass on the wall below the window and in the new house a steel ‘I beam’ has slumped with the heat.”
She said it was too soon to tell whether she and her husband, National Australia Bank and Woodside chairman Michael Chaney, could rebuild Wallcliffe House.
“We won’t know for at least a month what can be done,” Mrs Chaney said. “The site is very unsafe, there are cracks in the walls, one has come down since the fire. I’m also worried about some of the trees, the cubby-house tree appeared to have survived the fire but it has since split and branches have come down.
“The first priority is to make the site safe. Then we have to stabilise what is there and then see what is possible before we can even consider restoration.”
An arborist from Perth had “dropped everything” to go to Wallcliffe last week to begin assessing the damage to trees in the gardens around the remains. Two of the oldest trees were close to the original house and suffered heat and fire damage.
However, Mrs Chaney said she estimated about 80 per cent of the extensive tiered gardens remained or would recover from the fire.
“It’s a time of triage for the garden. The positives are that so much of the garden appears to have survived, our magpie family has returned, Wilson our resident water fowl survived and came out of the ashes yesterday (Tuesday last week), we’ve still got our rabbits, the kangaroos are still here, we are left with about 80 per cent of the boardwalk along the river – the fire went straight over it – and we still have the boatshed – the only timber building on the property was the only building to survive the fire.”
Mrs Chaney praised fire fighters for their efforts in trying to save Wallcliffe House on Thursday morning when the fire jumped the river mouth and a wind change drove it east into the riverbank property.
“Everybody did everything they could (to save Wallcliffe House,” she said. “We have a wonderful relationship with Brett (Wallcliffe Volunteer Fire Brigade captain Brett Trunfull) and the Wallcliffe boys. They have been in here a number of times since the fires to check on us.
“They saved Wallcliffe House (from a bushfire) three years ago, but it was just not possible this time.”
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