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In a quiet suburb in Melbourne, tucked away in a small culdeac, there is a house that will take your breath away. Well, it's a mansion, really. I've spent many days in this mansion. It was the location for a world I used to live in called Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. I played the fearless and glamorous 1920s detective Fry Fisher. Make a note of all the guest names, doctor. Yes, miss. I loved filming here. I always wondered about the history of this fabulous place, the people who have lived here.
I think we would have moved in just before New Year's Eve of 57. Fairy tale mindset. You've got to go exploring and then I was you're bohem you can't look after yourself to start again after the war. I used to walk around this house in between scenes and think to myself, "Oh, what stories there are to tell here. Labasa. It's a miracle that this house has survived. In 1887, a multi-millionaire bought a modest home on masses of land and gave instructions to transform it into the most magnificent house in Melbourne. And transform it did again and again.
From a lavish 35 room family residence, the jewel in the crown of the marvelous Melbourne era through booms and busts and world wars. Labbasa has lived many lives. In the 1920s, the opulent mansion was divided into 10 flats for people of more modest means, including socialites, war heroes, and even a silent movie star. And in the 1950s, a significant new cultural era in the building began. After World War II, the entire top floor of Labassa became home to Jewish refugees. The Appfellbound family moved into Labbasa in 1952. When I saw first, I got in a shock and I said, "Thanks God." And one of the ladies came to me and she said, "Touch the walls, you'll see practically like gold." That was heaven.
Absolutely heaven. The Appel Balms lived upstairs in flat 4. Rachel grew up here from when she was a baby. Wow, I'm here. Can't believe I'm back here after 70 odd years. Wow. Still remember everything. Beautiful lead light windows. My favorite banister. This is the one I used to ride on and I think my cousin rode on that one. It's hard to believe fathom that we actually lived in this magnificent place. It's sad that mom, who's 99, isn't able to go up the stairs. I'm sure she would have loved to see the apartment, but I'm going to see it for her. I'm so excited to be back.
When the Traig family moved in across the hall, Eva was a toddler. They lived in flat three. Well, I was an only chance. It was fun just having people around, sliding down the banisters. Although the Jewish families on the top floor came from different European countries, they shared language. I couldn't speak English at all, so we spoke English. I remember this beautiful big room and the windows. It's not small. But my memory was that it was even though it was this enormous room.
Labasa still holds signs of Jewish life here. This is the indentation of a mazuza which my father would have put up. A mazuza is a small decorative case and inside is a scroll inscribed with verses from the Torah. Wow. still there after all these years. Amazing kitchen. Yes. Oh my god. I remember how tiny it was. We had a little table here. It was two chairs. The families kept religious high holidays and cooked in kosher kitchens. Always used to cook and always was to bite. That was the traditional Friday shabers. There was a dividing wall in between the flats that didn't go all the
way up to the ceiling. This came in handy when one of the families had run out of, say, carrots. You could just ask your neighbor. I knocked and then throw it. Otherwise, she would have had to go down the staircase, up the staircase to go to their front door. So, I guess it was easier to just chuck it over the partition. Yeah. The residents in these upstairs flats had arrived in Australia with nothing. They had survived the Holocaust. They took us to ours.
They took us to They took my mother to ours. Some people didn't want to talk about it. Um, some people wouldn't stop talking about it. You know, for some they just said, "I've been through it. I don't want to talk about it. I want to forget about it." We've been completely down in our mind, in our heart. Slowly we'll build our life up to life. The postwar baby boom meant that there were more children running through the hallways of the mansion than ever before in its history. When Jewish immigrants first put down roots in Victoria, it was a long way away from Labbasa on the other side of Melbourne. In 1949, the first Jewish day school opened in St Kilda and the move to Melbourne's southeastern suburbs began
to become what is now affectionately known as the Bagel Belt. The Gruners arrived from Hungary in 1957. Susan was 11 and her brother Peter was 15. I loved our time here. I remember our old phone number LB4575. This was our place. Huh? I made friends really easily. Everybody was just lovely. Nobody asked me, "What's your religion?" They just said, "Can you play Skippy?" And we used to look for hidden treasure. At the time, I didn't realize it was the whole house that was the treasure. Susan left some of her own childhood secrets here. I would have been well more than 11 and a quarter.
Old enough to know better. It's here. Oh, here it is. So, there's a woman in bthers. There's a face. Uh, here is the beginnings of a face. I didn't finish it. And there's some flowers. So many memories. I don't know what I did yesterday. However, I know what I did what, 40, 50 years, 60 years ago. In 1936, the owners of Labasa built an art deco building next to the mansion known as the Willis Flats. Jewish families also lived here and the children played together in the shared grounds. The whites lived in the Willis Flats for 12 years.
We were privileged because we were the only ones that faced into Labassa. So we got to know the people in Labassa. So from that point of view, it shaped our lives. When Nom's family moved in, Helen had no idea that these neighbors were also Jewish. Then she saw Mrs. White preparing kosher meat for the family. Mrs. White and she put salt on the meat. Mrs. Apple nearly flipped. And I looked at her, she looks like a Christian cuz she just couldn't believe it that we were observant in any way. Then she said this out flies While most of the migrant children at Labasa didn't have grandparents with them, there was an honorary grandmother in the mansion. Mrs. Brley, the resident caretaker.
Mrs. Brley always said, "Don't run." I remember her being an elderly lady, quite tiny, quite strict, and she kept this whole house span. I can still see her. She had an apron. She always wore an apron. Mrs. Brilli, whatever you ask, she could be there. She looked after us very well. I can't remember if she had a stick or a strap, but there was always something that she, you know, would tap. But she was really nice and she'd make I think even had Christmas parties or did things for us as children and we had fun. She
was a friend. She was a lady. Yeah. Mrs. Brley was an abiding presence and keeper of secrets for over 43 years and it is largely thanks to her that Labbasa is in such great neck. By the mid60s the families who'd moved in after the war had worked hard to buy their own homes. Eventually the appal bombs trrow rigs and gruners moved out of their beloved labasa. When I move out I cry. This we grow up. It was really beautiful. The whites were one of the last families to move out. For his last few years in Labasa, Noom rented a small study room in the tower. From here, Noom had a bird's eyee view of the new wave of residents flowing
into the building. Another cultural change was about to arrive at the mansion. the place was almost being completely taken over by these um uh by these bohemian type people. They were almost a different species, but they were interesting to look at and uh things were changing. By the late60s, the global counterculture movement was in full swing. This generation wanted to explore new ways of living. Shareousing provided an alternative to traditional family life and a new type of independence was possible. Word of the magnificent mansion spread throughout art school campuses and young creatives. You could rent a flat for a modest sum and 10 or more students could live there.
There used to be magnificent parties where uh you know the doors would be playing and you know there'd be strobe lights going and people in their crushed velvet would be dancing and I remember thinking oh my god I want to live here because it was just such a groovy place to live. How old place bathroom I lived in flat one which was the servants's quarters but even the servants quarters were pretty schmick and it was cheap the entire flat was $27 a week. So this is the late 60s early 70s where Melbourne is a ferment in terms of uh creativity. Most of the people that I shared with were part of a theater group called Tribe. We were known for taking our clothes off quite a lot in the
interests of art. So it was very you know arty writhing kind of stuff. We were all working at La Mama in Carlton and were real hippies. Many of the people who came to Labaza were drawn to the house because they appreciated its beauty, its aesthetic. So we had a lot of musicians. They love playing in the music room where we are now. And we had grand pianos in the corner. We had violinists and lots of painters as well. So no one was working in a bank really. Uh although we should have been, some of us should have had a real job.
The new Bohemian residents were able to live the way they wanted to at Labbasa, play music at full volume all night. So people came and went. Then there were shifting populations of people who would move into the ballroom, you know, ride their motorbikes and park them in front of the ornate fireplace and let the oil drip onto the floor and smoke enormous amounts of drugs. One young man used to ride his motorcycle up the stairwell. Well, they love to party and Melbourne was very much a party town. So, you know, people would ring up and say, "There's a party on at Labassa and they just turn up.
By this stage, Mrs. Brley, who'd been the caretaker for 43 years, had left. There was nobody looking after the household, and the real estate agent rarely made inspections. The mansion was at risk of falling into decline. I would have been 20, 21 when I moved into Labassa. I was a naive country boy. I'd been playing music with a group of guys in a band and can't even remember who told me about it, but I ended up here coming through my old bedroom and uh thinking of Boris who lived in the cellar, painting the ceiling of that
room black and putting little star dots on there. All those memories come flooding back. Randall didn't know it then, but Labasa would become a hugely significant time in his life. I had a wonderful girlfriend, Antwanette. She introduced me to film, introduced me to the visual arts. She was a student at the Victorian College for the Arts. So, yeah, whole new world. She was wonderful. Opened my eyes to a lot of things. Randall's flat had access to the cellar which Antwanette used as her studio. And like other Labassa residents, she also left something of herself behind.
Well, how about that? Uh, Antwanet was renowned for her animation and these three pieces are almost like an animation sequence. Pretty amazing they're still here. There was a trigger to leaving Labassa. At that stage, I had uh a new flatmate who was a morphine addict. When the flatmate decided to break into a chemist for drugs, Randall went along. What followed was a dark night of the soul in a police cell that would change the course of his life forever. It was at that time that I began this movement to becoming a Christian and realized that a lot of things needed to change.
It was much better for me to put Labassa behind me and move on. And I rather unceremoniously dumped Antuinette was pretty shoddy for Jane. Leaving Labasa was purely down to show business. It was a real wrench to leave Labassa, but my life was more and more in Carlton uh at La Mama. That was where my life was. Amazingly, despite their wild parties and overcrowding, the Bohemians turned out to be excellent custodians of Labasa. The mansion's original glory remained largely intact. The hippies had a sense of ownership of the house because they saw it in humanistic terms. You know, the house has got so many layers of lived history. And some people even saw it as a living, breathing being, you know, that
was mystical and restless. And other people saw it as a conscious entity. So people related to the house in a very personal way. In 1980, when the last owner of the house died, Labasa came up for auction. The public were worried if it was sold to a private owner, Labbasa could be lost forever. After a lastminute donation, the National Trust of Australia stepped in to save Labasa. We successfully bought the place for $282,500 which at the time put the organization under a huge amount of financial stress but it was for the right reasons. We have Labassa these days supported by an army of volunteers. Labbasa opens its doors to the public every month to learn about
the history of the mansion. So many stories. So many people have been here. So when you think about it, most recently 700 people have lived in this place. And now hundreds and thousands of people have been through Labassera as visitors with the National Trust. As the people came flooding through the mansion, so did the stories. And a project called Labbassa Lives was created. Labassa lives include stories that people have written about themselves, their observations of the house and how it existed at their particular period. It was through Labbassa lives that Randall was able to reconnect with his past love, the artist Antuinette. As I began to reflect on the way I treated her, I really wanted to get in touch with her
and just express my regrets and apologize and ask for forgiveness. And I was able to do that. 5 years after their reconciliation, Randall received the dreadful news that Antwanette had passed away. Well, it came like a bolt out of the blue. Uh because I hadn't heard about it. Uh Vicky Shuttleworth let me know that Antwanette had died. Anette, she always saw Labassa through the artist's eyes. There will always be a little bit of Antwanette here. The big thing is just the overwhelming sense of gratitude that there had been that reconciliation and you know forgiveness
on a classic Melbourne rainy Sunday. The Labassa family are coming home. Welcome back. Thank you. Hello. Welcome. Are you there's going to be a reunion of some of the tenants and uh we're all going to have an opportunity to exchange experiences. Hi No. Good to see you. It's funny cuz now he's right. People are coming from all over Australia. Anyone who ever called Labassa home and they're bringing their families. Welcome back. Welcome home. Come on in, Susie. Good morning, welcome, Howard. It's nice to have you come through the front door today. How are you?
Do I need a No, no, no. You're a special guest today. You got to wipe your feet this time. And no smoking in the house. Times have changed how it Welcome home. back to the bus. I still remember things. Look at the wallpaper. That's the sun. Look at the wallpaper. It's exactly the same color. This is a football. Hello, Eva. Hey, how are you? I believe I lived in your old flat. That's what I believe. You moved out and you moved in.
I'm thinking of the passage of time and they were wonderful, wonderful years here and we were lucky. Welcome back. Thank you. Any excuse to come back to Labasa. I think everyone who has lived here feels a sense of ownership of Labassa. It's got a pull on you. It's got a pull on anyone who's lived here. It's uh like an old love. I've never forgotten that time. I certainly didn't contemplate what legacy it might have for the rest of my life. Want to introduce you to Pat. Hello Helen.
I would like to see Mrs. Brley's family. Yes. Pat Brley. I used to be my grandmother was and Harold. He's my father. Yeah. So, I'm sorry. I meant to bring the photo. I still have the photo of Mr. Brley. My cousin and I we he was today, but we play No, I don't remember. And that's Mrs. Brley. Yes. Yeah. That is you. Yes. Hello, gorgeous. Labasa must have left a very lasting impression on my subconscious cuz it is the place that I revisit the most in my dreams.
I think the great significance of Labassa is that it is authentic. You can see the layers of history. It's not just a building. It's a story. The humanity of the house has survived. With everyone back home again, it's time to capture the latest moment in the history of the glorious Labasa. I'm going to count to three and then I want everybody to say Labasa. One, two, three.
