Split legacy

By Elizabeth Hart
IT culminated in the reading of the will. The year was 1976, and the fate of a slice of land on the corner of Army Road and Princes Highway just east of Pakenham, known as Wanda, was about to be determined.
Years of heartbreak would follow for the local-town dynasty that had occupied Wanda, originally called Closeburn, for 100 years.
The story could be straight out of a Miss Marple script. The characters and props include an ailing old lady, her two daughters, an inheritance, a nephew carer, diplomatic and civic visitations, doses of medications, and pricey antiques.
When the will was read, one of the people in the room fainted.
Wanda was the home of Berwick Shire councillor William (Bill) Close and his wife Agnes. Call her Agnes senior.
The holding had once stretched from the highway on both sides of Army Road right up to Deveney Street. By 1942 only 32 acres remained.
It was a modest but comfortable estate. Dignitaries dined and partied there, because Bill’s brother-in-law was the Norwegian Consul Andes Schruder. Bill was Berwick Shire president and a founder of the Pakenham Show and the bush nursing hospital.
Bill’s grand-daughter Gail Dudeck lived at Wanda from 1948 until 1955 and loved to hear the stories her mother Jean (known as Jonny) told her of those early days.
“The place consisted of plantations, orchards, hen houses, stables, and cow sheds,” Gail recalls.
She remembers the acquisition of antiques, an extensive library, and first edition Mary Grant Bruce Billabong books. All would eventually become part of an inventory at auction.
An inheritance can be a blessing and a burden, both being opposite sides of the same coin, like a wet seed silently sprouting tension among loved ones.
It was when the two sisters, Agnes senior’s daughters Agnes junior and Jean, inherited some money from their great-aunt, Susan Schruder, that the seeds of greed took root.
With the best intentions, the sisters agreed to put the money into a trust for their mother Agnes senior to use until her death, at which time it would be divided between the two sisters.
Enter the old lady’s nephew. He was an amputee, having lost the lower part of his leg after shooting himself in the foot while going through a fence. Such accidents were not uncommon in those days. He was also a diabetic in later years, as well as Agnes’s carer and live-in relative.
“My grandmother was often ill from wrong doses of medication,” Gail says. “She recovered during holidays at Rokewood in the Western District with my parents Jean (Jonny) and Guy Thwaites.”
When Agnes senior died in 1972, Jean expected everything to be settled as pre-ordained.
But the last will and testament of Jean’s mother Agnes senior was not the one Jean expected to hear. It had been changed a short time before the death.
That was when Jean fainted.
Agnes junior was to inherit everything, but with the proviso that the nephew could live at Wanda until his death. Jean was to receive $500.
Jean and Guy contested the will.
“My father had given up his business in Perth and our family moved to Pakenham because my grandmother Agnes was unwell,” Gail says.
“Dad put his money into fixing up Wanda and keeping the gardens in order. My grandmother paid the rates. She enjoyed an income from the orchards and from her annuity. My father had to go out and find a job to keep the family.”
The matter settled out of court, saving the defendants from bankruptcy, Gail says.
But the bitter dispute over Wanda had divided the family forever.
“No one spoke for years,” Gail said. “Most of the antiques went out of Wanda to be quietly auctioned off.”
Four years later the few remaining listed pieces and the 32 acres that had been Wanda went under the hammer. The real estate sign at number 40 Army Road offered “a rarely presented opportunity” to acquire a well-located property.
The sign masked the gouging animosity between the two sisters. After the deaths of both sisters’ husbands and when Gail’s aunt Agnes junior was in dire straits financially, Gail’s own husband Gerd brokered an uneasy peace with the sisters. But the damage had been done, the inheritance all eaten up by avarice and envy.
“There were no winners,” Gail said.
Apart from being the first house in the district to be built from the miracle new fire-safe asbestos sheeting, Wanda was never an architectural treasure nor a grand mansion. Its history lay in the personalities that occupied it over three generations, its demise in the grab for its spoils.
A plan to build 16 villas on the last acre completes the story that began a century ago.
A couple of 100-year-old spruces, gifts from the Norwegian consul, and a 100-year-old oak the Close family planted after the death of their first baby remain, their fate also to be determined by the developer who now owns the land.
“I find it sad to look at the devastation of the last remaining acre of Wanda,” Gayle said.
The Star News Group, which publishes the Pakenham-Berwick Gazette, now occupies a corner of the site. In 1955 it contained an old brick kiln, with a tall chimney alongside a mud dam.
“My grandfather would be surprised to see how many houses are now standing in what were once paddocks, orchards of apples, pears, apricots, and 10 varieties of plums, and a quince tree,” Gail said.
The name Wanda stood for William and Agnes.