ARCHITECTURE
Federation Regency Bungalow
No 40 Riverside Road is a single-storey house constructed in limestone and brick with an ‘M’ format corrugated iron roof. The place is located on the corner of Riverside Road and Pier Street. The front elevation is symmetrically planned with a full-width return bull-nosed roofed verandah. At the rear of the house the maid’s quarters remain in place.
HISTORY
Robin Gourley lived at this residence and was a well known boat builder, working for Howson & Murray and building his own boats including Roter class yachts.
Robert Gourley is mentioned as helping retrieve the bodies of two young children that drowned in 1908: (reference)
Robin built six boats in the 1920's and maybe 30's; the Mafalda built about 1928 for the Merendino family Fremantle fishermen), and Britannia, about 28 feet (owned for many years by a 'Blue' Munro). Britannia was a pleasure fishing boat but Mafalda was used for crayfishing from Fremantle until the 1960's and purchased by Tony Larard in 1969. There was another sister vessel Dorothy owned at Albany by a fisherman called Prideaux.
He still owned and sailed a yacht named Wangara in the 1950's. Robin's brother James was a boatbuilder and the other brother, Harry, although he built his own yacht Pioneer, was more of a house and building carpenter. From Tony Larard, Maritime Heritage Association journal Volume 12, No. 1 . March, 2001.
RESIDENTS
1933 - 1935: Plummer, John
1935 - 1937: Hawkins, John E.
1937 - 1938: Vacant
1938 - 1943: Chuck, Albert E.
1944 - 1949: Mills, William
