Janet Whiting still can’t believe her luck.
It is 10 years since the first female chairman of the prestigious National Gallery of Victoria and her husband Phil Lukies bought their historic home in South Yarra’s premier Botanic Gardens precinct at the top of Punt Road hill.
It’s only two doors from the historic Airlie mansion, once the home of former prime minister Stanley Bruce. And while it boasts little of the opulence of Airlie, what it lacks in size it makes up for in style.
‘’I can’t believe it, the location is extraordinary. I can be home from work in five minutes in peak hour,’’ says Whiting, whose day job is being one of Australia’s leading litigators as a partner with Gilbert and Tobin.
‘’Despite the fact we are so close to Punt Road, there is no noise. It is incredibly peaceful,” she says, leaning across the table of the backyard outdoor setting.
Despite being only doors away from one of the busiest roads in Melbourne, you can almost hear a pin drop in this garden of sun and green, which turns purple in spring when a brilliant jacaranda tree at its centre bursts into flower.
The garden is also a reminder that this is still a family home for the couple’s two boys, complete with a spring-free trampoline and sleek in-ground, glass-enclosed pool.
The house was built in 1909 by the American Francis Boardman Clapp, who created Melbourne’s tramways when he founded the cable tram operator the Melbourne Tramway & Omnibus Company.
At one point in its history it served as a boarding house before being converted into three apartments separated by a grand wooden staircase.
When Whiting and Lukies, an art director, bought the two-storey home a decade ago they turned the upstairs apartments into a bedroom and a studio for Lukies’s design work.
In the front sitting room are Walter Burley-Griffin chairs from Newman College at the University of Melbourne, while in the hallway hangs a framed 1952 Marilyn Monroe calendar marked with tiny weekly reminders to eat fish each Friday.
But the most striking feature of the house — the galley kitchen which takes pride of place in the family room — took shape three years ago. The home, in fact, has two kitchens, one each for Whiting and Lukies.
“Phil who does most of the cooking — and is a great cook — doesn’t like an audience, particularly when we are entertaining. Whereas If I am cooking, I like to be talking,’’ Whiting says.
“Phil wanted his man cave kitchen, with a restaurant swinging door. We agreed I would have a galley kitchen in the family room out the back. I knew I didn’t want it to look like most of the kitchens in the Melbourne Weekly that have that white, grey and black, mainly marble stone features. So we decided we would ask if Kate Durham would do the kitchen for us. She was delighted, and our only instructions were no brown!’’
Durham, the cartoonist, painter, sculptor and jewellery designer who is married to star barrister Julian Burnside, went about creating a masterpiece.
“Phil designed the kitchen, fitted it, took all the facings off, then went over to her studio and laid them on her floor and she painted,’’ Whiting says.
‘’It lightens the room and makes it a really bright, happy space to be in. It is big and bold but also has lots of tiny details. Like a hidden fish, a hidden bird. Every time you look at it you notice something you didn’t before. It is captivating, it is really captivating.’’
Lukies says Durham “wanted to bring our beautiful garden into the house. It is a great place to start the day,’’ he says.
The couple have also built a guesthouse adorned with finials and an ornamental chimney in the backyard, which blends with the magnificent homes of the neighbours. It’s also home to Lukies’s “other” man cave.
“I feel truly blessed,” he says with a smile. “I have three man caves — the kitchen, the studio room upstairs and the shed out the back.”
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