Perth Hydrobiology Office

If you walked down Forrest Avenue in East Perth today, you’d have no idea that one small block of land once carried over a century of personal stories, businesses and change. No.7 Forrest Avenue went from being a modest home where furniture auctions were held and families moved in and out, to housing environmental consultancies and laboratories, before being earmarked for a new high-rise tower.

 

Early Days

The first signs of life at No.7 show up in the early 1900s. In 1907, Eben Allen & Co ran an auction there, selling all the household furniture and effects. A similar sale followed in 1925, organised by H.E. Wells & Co. These weren’t small clear-outs. They were selling the entire contents of the home, the sort of event that marked a family moving on or an estate being wound up.

 

By the mid-1920s, a string of names appears in connection with the property. Robert O. Preshaw, a draftsman with the Lands and Surveys Department, lived there in 1926. Only a few months later, the name changes to the Hitch family, with seven year old Molly, showing how transient some tenancies were in inner Perth at the time.

 

Publicans, Boarders and the Wegg Family

The 1930s brought a colourful mix of residents. For a time, Verney and Phyllis Binns lived there, followed soon after by I. M. Prosser. Then came Nathaniel Hawke Wegg, a man already known around Perth for his work in the hotel trade, holding licences for venues like the Colston Wine Saloon and the Railway Hotel at Midland Junction. He died in 1933 but the Wegg family kept their link to the house. Electoral and directory records show various Weggs at No. 7 well into the 1930s and 1940s.

 

Mid-Century Households

By the early 1950s, the address had passed onto John Michael and Kathleen Millane, who operated Millane’s Newsagency from the premises. John had a colourful backstory. As a young man in 1931, he was fined for running a betting shop on Murray Street with a few others. Later, he went straight, running the newsagency business with his wife.

 

From the 1960s, the house was in the hands of the Van Heyst family, Dutch migrants who settled in Perth during the post-war wave of European immigration. They were the last long-term private family occupants before the property began shifting towards commercial use.

 

A “1940 House” That Wasn’t

Real estate records describe the house at 7 Forrest Avenue as being “built in 1940.” Little is know about the previous residence, where auctions on atleast two occasions were held there decades earlier. The original house, which certainly existed in 1907, was either heavily rebuilt or replaced around 1940. By the time it appeared in modern property listings, it was described as a small brick-and-tile cottage, consisting of one bedroom and one bathroom, 122 square metres on a 324-square-metre block.

 

From Home to Business

From the 1990s onwards, the little house was caught up in East Perth’s property market. It sold for $110,000 in 1990, dipped to $86,500 in 1992 and then shot up to $310,000 by 1999 as inner-city land became more valuable. In July 2021, it sold again for $880,000.

 

By this point, the old cottage was no longer just a home. It had been converted to office use and was leased by specialist businesses. Two of the best-known tenants were Hydrobiology WA Pty Ltd, an environmental consultancy and Advanced Analytical Australia, a scientific testing laboratory. Both firms used the address as their Perth base during the 2010s, and both later moved on.

 

Demolition and Redevelopment

After the house was demolished in 2021, the block sat vacant while developers pursued their plans for a 22-storey tower. The development application (DAP-22/5100) was lodged on behalf of three landowners (Bennett Apartments Pty Ltd, Delstrat Pty Ltd and MCPBB Pty Ltd) with planning consultants Element acting as their representative.

 

The $21.5 million mixed-use tower covered the combined sites of 52–56 Bennett Street and 7 Forrest Avenue. Plans included 73 serviced apartments, 12 residential apartments, a restaurant or café tenancy and 55 car bays, with extra “future-proofed” basement parking to allow the short-stay units to be converted into residential apartments after ten years.

 

Despite concerns from neighbours about height, noise and traffic (the usual issues), the development was approved in March 2023 by the Perth Local Development Assessment Panel but it never progressed. 

 

The project struggled against rising construction costs, softening demand for serviced apartments and community unease about bulk, parking and short-stay accommodation in an area already undergoing high-rise transformation. Despite its “future-proofed” basement design and the promise of eventually converting the serviced apartments into permanent homes, the tower was never built.

Instead, the property changed hands once more. On 4 May 2024, the block at 7 Forrest Avenue, by then an empty parcel of 324 square metres, was sold as vacant land for just $288,000. After more than a century of use, the site’s old cottage and its ambitious tower scheme have both vanished, leaving the land awaiting its next chapter.