The northern coastline of suburban Sydney, with its abundance of picturesque beaches, is a magnet in summer for many visitors from far and near. One of the less frequented of the Northern Beaches, owing to its relative inaccessibility and lack of a rock pool✲, is Bungan Beach.
What drew me to Bungan this summer was not however the pristine waters of its uncrowded beach, but one particular unusual building standing out high up on Bungan Head…Bungan Castle, which this year celebrates 100 years since it was constructed.
Situated as one later observer noted “on a bold headland of the coast, about eighteen miles from Sydney” [1] (Newport, NSW), Bungan’s castle was built at the very pinnacle of a cliff-top by Gustav Adolph Wilhelm Albers, a German-born Australian artists’ agent. Today it is hemmed in and surrounded by a raft of modern, multi-million dollar mansions which share its unparalleled breathtaking views. But when Albers built “Bungan Castle” on what is now Bungan Head Road, the imposing high dwelling was surrounded only by bush and cleared scrub and completely neighbourless!✪
∆ [photo (ca.1928): National Library of Australia]
Albers in 1919 was considered something of a doyen of the Australian art community, he represented local artists like Sidney Long and JJ Hilder, and the castle (his abode at weekends and holidays❇) acted as a kind of 1920s arts hub, an unofficial Sydney artists’ colony. The leather-bound visitors’ book (still surviving) records the names of numerous artistic personalities of the early 20th century including the formidable and influential Norman Lindsay.
∆ [photo: NSW Archives & Records]
Aside from creating a skyline haven for practitioners of the art community, the eccentricity of Albers’ personal taste in decor is worthy of elaboration: he furnished Bungan Castle with an idiosyncratic and vast array of collectibles, a number of which the art connoisseur acquired on his regular jaunts overseas✤. The castle interior was inundated with a phenomenal “hotch-potch” of antiquated weaponry – including Medieval armour, Saracen helmets, Viking shields, sword and daggers including a Malay kris, battle-axes, muskets, flint-lock guns, Zulu rifles; convicts’ leg-irons and Aboriginal breast-plates.
∆ [photo: Fairfax Archives]
In addition to the assortment of objects of a martial nature, there were numerous other oddities and curios, such as a big bell previously located at Wisemans Ferry and used to signal the carrying out of convict executions in colonial times; a human skull mounted above the hall door (washed up on Bungan Beach below the castle); a sea chest; a variety of ships’ lanterns; “tom-toms” (drums) and various items of taxidermy [2].
This home is a castle – a “Half-Monty” of a castle
From the road below, staring up at the tree-lined Bungan Castle, it does bear the countenance of something from a pre-modern time and not out of place in a rural British landscape. Constructed of rough-hewn stone (quarried from local (Pittwater) sandstone), it contains many of the castellated features associated with such a historic piece of architecture – towers and turrets, a donjon (keep), battlements, vaults, a great hall, a coat-of-arms, etc.
This said, Bungan Castle lacks other standard features – a drawbridge with a portcullis and a barbican ; visible gargoyles; and a moat (although Edinburgh Castle also lacks a moat, being built up high on bedrock it doesn’t require one for defensive purposes); and it is also bereft of a dungeon! And of course, most telling, parts of the southern and eastern facades are clearly more ‘home’ than castle! One could easily dismiss any claim to it being thought of as an authentic facsimile of the “real thing” (some early observers described it, erroneously, as a ‘Norman’ castle), but with a bit of licence we can reasonably ascribe the descriptor (small) ‘castle’ to Bungan, much as New Zealand tourism promotes the lauded Lanarch ‘Castle’ on the Otago Peninsula (also without many of those classic features).
A family concern
GAW Albers’ prominence in the Northern Beaches area and the talking point uniqueness of Bungan Castle led many locals to dub the Sydney art dealer “the Baron of Bungan Castle”. Albers died in 1959 but the ‘baronial’ castle has remained firmly in family hands. The current owners are Albers’ nephew John Webeck and his wife Pauline. John maintains the family’s artistic bent as well, having like Uncle William had a career as an art dealer.
Artists’ Mecca? museum? both?
Webeck has signalled that he would like to reprise the castle’s former mantle as an artists’ Mecca, but I can’t help feeling that with such a wealth of out-of-the-ordinary artifacts within its walls, that its future might be most apt as an historical museum. Such suggestions have been made in the past – the Avalon Beach Historical Society referred to Bungan Castle having been an “unofficial repository for many articles, (sufficient to deem it) Pittwater’s first museum”[3].
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✲ the close proximity of larger beaches with on-site car parks (absent from Bungan) – Newport, The Basin and Mona Vale – make them a more popular choice for beach-goers
✪ at the time there was only three other homes on the entire headland
❇ Albers’ principal family home was in Gordon, not far way on the North Shore of Sydney
✤ although the bulk of the castle’s collection were donated to Albers by others who thought it an appropriate home
[1] WEM Abbott, ‘Castle on a Cliff Edge’, The Scone Advocate, 25-Mar-1949, http://nla.gov.au.news-article162719685
[2] ‘Castle Turrets on Sydney’s Skyline’ (Nobody Wants them…Our Baronial Halls), The Sun (Sydney), 08-May-1927, http://nla.gov.au.news-article223623550. The author of this article goes on to lament the fact that Sydney’s castle homes had fallen out of fashion for the well-heeled “princes of commerce” in search of a suitable ancestoral mansion…in 1927 their preference was apparently for modern Californian villas with all the latest conveniences.
[3] ‘A Visit To Bungan Castle By ABHS’, Pittwater Online News, 14-20 Oct 2018, Issue 379, www.pittwatetonlinenew.com