"Billabong" - the end-house at Narrabeen - where it all began (it did not,
however, have a bay-window - see below)

ONE WAS where that first-Sunday afternoon tea-party, which started it all, had taken place.

In chapter 2 Lawrence implies it was at Narrabeen (from his logistical description...tram trip from Manly, walk to the lagoon, etc).

Later, in chapter 18, as Somers' boat sails down the Harbour, Lawrence says specifically it was at Narrabeen (this was part of the correct ending that Steele decided to omit from the CUP edition)...

There ahead was the open gate of the harbour, the low Heads with the South Lighthouse, and the Pacific beyond, breaking white. On the left was Manly, where Harriet had lost her yellow scarf. And then the tram going to Narrabeen, where they had first seen Jaz.

However, for most of our research period (1976-c.2010) I had thought this end-house, called in the novel "St Columb", was a place-transposition from "Hinemoa" in Florence Avenue, Collaroy (and not Narrabeen).

The evidence for this address, provided initially by Peter Oatley in 1979, seemed unassailable.

Firstly, and most importantly, we could place Scott there, c.1922.

His two stepsons, whom I interviewed in 1976, both remembered Scott coming to their home, "Hinemoa", in Florence Avenue, Collaroy, in the period Lawrence was in Sydney - and indeed the relevant electoral rolls confirmed that they were living there in 1922.

When I read the description in Kangaroo of the "St Columb" end-house and its main room ("with settles round the windows" - ie, a bay-window) to Peter Oatley, he confirmed that this was precisely his memory of "Hinemoa", down to some framed photographs and a medal belonging to his deceased father Major FDW Oatley hanging on the walls, just as Lawrence describes in chapter 2:

There were many family photographs, and a framed medal and ribbon and letter praising the first Trewhella.

(The "settles round the window" description was also confirmed to me by the man who built "Hinemoa", Horrie Hayman - see above and my Secret Army Research notes 3/2/79 entry.)

In addition, "Hinemoa" was both the end-house in Florence Avenue and was "sideways facing the lagoon" - the exact, and distinctive description Lawrence gives to his fictional "end-house" in Kangaroo.

Hum's son, interviewed by John Ruffels, remembered the Hum family spending the school holidays at Collaroy, and in particular recalled them taking a rented bungalow in Seaview Parade, a street that is one block away from "Hinemoa".

(He even recalled the name of the area before it became known as "The Basin" - it was originally called "Red Beach", because of the colour of the sand there.)

Even more indicatively than that, Yeend had said in his letters to me, several times, that the "house I was looking for" was in Collaroy Basin. He indicated that this was where the Friends holidayed (see the Yeend quote cited above).

When I mentioned Seaview Parade - the Hum vacation venue - Yeend told me that I would be better off looking in nearby Beach Road (where I had earlier interviewed Walter Friend).

And to cap it all, Yeend told me that in the 1920s and '30s Robert Moreton Friend had spent school holidays in The Basin with his young family.

However, more recent research by my DH Lawrence Society fellow-member Robert Whitelaw cast serious doubt on my "Collaroy scenario", and "Hinemoa" in particular.

(My principal research "ferret", John Ruffels, has now retired from pounding the pavement in Randwick, and is living up the Central Coast, north of Sydney - though he still helps me via the Internet.)

Robert Whitelaw, who is as diligent and tenacious an investigator as Ruffels proved to be, focussed his research-attention on Narrabeen, looking for Lawrence's fictional end-house, "St Columb" (which in the novel Lawrence located as being next to Narrabeen Lagoon).

Via a local history of the nearby North Narrabeen Surf Club, he tracked down someone who had worked for a man called Charles Schultz, whose wife had owned a large holiday house called "Billabong" at the end of Ocean Road, North Narrabeen (see picture of "Billabong" above).

(Significantly, this end-house was owned by Schultz's wife - just as in Kangaroo "St Columb" is owned by Trewhella's wife, Rose.)

Not only was it, ostentatiously, the "end-house" in the street, but it too was "sideways facing the lagoon". Moreover, this "end-house, sideways facing the lagoon" at Narrabeen was a much-more likely candidate for "St Columb" than "Hinemoa" at Collaroy.