November 2025
Cute little modernish Georgian house in Anderson Street South Yarra, 1941. It was built for the van Stratens, who had recently come out from England, and remained home for son Frank up until his death last year aged 87.
Frank van Straten was Australia’s foremost theatre historian, writing many books and histories on various theatres and performers, and was the inaugural archivist of the Performing Arts Museum in 1979, then director 1984-94 – they had a lot of great exhibitions.
I met him a few times, he was a nice man. The museum is now called the Australian Performing Arts Collection, and they havnt had formal exhibitions for quite a while, but a new space is apparently about to open at Hamer Hall.
Storey of Melbourne 