The owner of a 99-year-old California bungalow in Melbourne’s north had a novel approach to living in the country and not wanting to part from her much loved home.
The owner of a 99-year-old California bungalow in Melbourne’s north had a novel approach to living in the country and not wanting to part from her much loved home.
By Carolyn Webb
February 3, 2025 — 11.29am
It can be heartbreaking to have to leave a much loved house.
But Kaye Powell has found a deft way of avoiding a teary farewell to the house in Melbourne’s north she’s owned for 43 years. Also of rescuing it from the wreckers.
She is taking the 1920s-era cream-coloured California bungalow with her.
In about a week, a moving company will pick up the gracious 99-year-old house from Barton Street, Reservoir and transport it 100 kilometres to the small country town of Malmsbury, north of Melbourne.
In Malmsbury, Powell and her partner have bought a half-acre block, on which the transplanted city house will be their (old) new home.
“I feel like I’m a snail, putting my house on my back and taking it to the next place,” Powell said.
A neighbour’s post, on Saturday, on community Facebook page Reservoir 3073 about the house move has garnered more than 50,000 likes and 1300 overwhelmingly positive comments.
The neighbour behind the post, Robert Rando, told The Age that with higher density homes appearing across Reservoir, there was a strong chance Powell’s house, on a big block, would have been demolished by the new landowners.
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“Great to see this house being relocated and not just torn down,” Rando posted.
Rando had noticed a poster Powell attached to a wire fence outside her now empty house, which is awaiting removal.
On the poster Powell wrote that the house was built in 1926 and had two owners including her.
“I am moving it to half an acre in Malmsbury where it will be surrounded by a beautiful garden, and live for another 100 years,” the sign said.
Powell said she was “absolutely gobsmacked” by the public reaction to the Facebook post.
In 1982, she fell instantly in love with the house, the first she bought, which was “a beautiful old house with character”.
Its features include fireplaces, lead lighting, high ceilings, a bay window, sash windows and large rooms.
Powell lived in the house from 1982 to 2014. Over the following decade, she lived at Glenlyon, near Daylesford, in an old house its owner had moved there from the Melbourne suburb of McKinnon. Powell and her partner are now downsizing to live on the smaller block in Malmsbury.
While they lived in Glenlyon, they leased the Reservoir house to a friend, Dominique Sherwood Graham and her partner Lyall, who had four children while living there.
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Sherwood Graham said she was sad to leave but was glad the house would be well cared for by Powell. Sherwood Graham and her family have bought their own house in Wonthaggi.
Powell needed to sell the Reservoir property but realised, as is common in the area, the house would probably be knocked down and replaced by units. She said she had seen other lovely period homes in Barton Street knocked down.
“I said, ‘I can’t let that happen to my house’. It’s beautiful. I just wanted to rescue it,” Powell said.
“I suppose at Malmsbury we could have built something new, but I don’t want to live in a new, soulless house.”
Cost-wise, transplanting a house was close to, but not as expensive as a new build. Powell said it required many permits, “but I think it will be worth it in the long run”.
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Carolyn Webb is a reporter for The Age.Connect via email.
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