Kirribilli

This guide to Kirribilli in Sydney opens in 1919, when solicitor Arthur Wigram Allen bought the point's Gothic cottage planning to subdivide the harbourside land into house blocks and sell it off for profit. It follows the public outcry that reached all the way to the prime minister, and the decades afterward when the cottage quietly sheltered Governor-General's staff and then ordinary tenants. Look at the steep gables and lacy timber trim as you approach the point.