Removalists in the North Shore – Mosman

Over the years Man and His Van have found many Mosman clients to be very particular when it comes to moving home. Even when they’re still moving to the place and have yet to settle in and become true-blue Mosmanites! Sometimes they’re fussy because they’re very wealthy and need to be reassured that we can move Streetons and Pro Harts just as carefully as a framed crayon from one of their kids’ playschools. Othertimes it’s because they’ve accumulated so much junk they can’t keep track of it all and have trouble believing that we can. Mosman people can be big on volume whether they’re coming or going.

It has ever been so. When Archie Mosman and his twin brother George became the area’s founding settlers in 1830 they needed a ship to get all their stuff into the bay and goodness know how many bullock carts to drag it all up the hill that’s now Avenue Road to where they built their mansion home. This was Mosman’s first recorded removal. [Man and His Van didn’t get that particular job but only because it was close on 200 years before our time.

The Mosmans called their home The Nest and built it on what’s now the junction of Badham Avenue and Mosman Street that stretched in those days all the way down to the bay. You can still see one of their storage barns surviving there as home to the 1st Mosman Scout troop. It’s not called Mosman Bay for nothing! The Nest alas was demolished in 1969 but a flagpole marks where it used to stand.

At that stage of their lives Archie and George were in the whaling business and their factory with its stinking boiling-down works was on the site where the Rowing Club now stands as one of the suburb’s leading watering holes. Their whaling ships tied up to the seawall there and all along the shore where the ferry wharf and bus stop now are.

All the Mosmans are long gone – although Archie is inexplicably buried in Randwick cemetery where Mosman Council maintains his grave – and their original estate has been subdivided many times creating a warren of narrow streets that make Mosmanites even more glad they chose Man and His Van to carefully pick their way to and from their destination.
All that’s all on the historic Harbour side of Mosman, of course, as is the enclave of Clifton Gardens, another area that benefits from local knowledge when driving a truck full of other folks’ valuables. Mosman is possibly unique in Sydney in that it contains several of these enclaves each of which is like a mini-suburb on its own. Others are Balmoral Beach, Beauty Point, and Down By The Zoo.

Comparatively recently – like 59 years recently – the secluded waterside area of Clifton Gardens sheltered a boisterous three-storey hotel whose Friday and Saturday night revels could, breeze willing, be heard across the Harbour at Rose Bay. Like the stink at Mosman Bay100 years earlier this enraged the neighbours and when the hotel closed in 1967 the council lost no time demolishing it and creating a park on its site.

Clifton Gardens has history too, of course, apart from its dear old pub. At the end of Morella Road just where it turns sharp right into Illuka Road, stands a 55-room property, The Manor. Long known as The House of Dreams when first built, it was bought in the 1920s by a religious sect, the Order of The Star of The East, whose members believed that a messiah would return to life, land on Grotto Point, just across Middle Harbour from Balmoral Beach and presumably walk across the water to a 2000-seat amphitheatre that had been specially built there.
On the big day the messiah failed to show, of course – unlike Man and His Van whom you can rely on to turn up hail, rain, or torrential heat – but the amphitheatre remained as a Mosman landmark until it was torn down in 1958 and the apartment block you see today and now known as Stancliff was built on its site at Wyargine Street. But come low tide at Grotto Point you can still see rusting remnants of the messiah’s landing pad just below the lighthouse.

Balmoral Beach is the show pony of Mosman’s environs. It’s actually two beaches in one – Hunters Beach at the south end and Edwards Beach at the north, the two being separated by The Island, which isn’t really an island but simply a promontory on which you will no doubt follow generations of Mosmanites and have happy family picnics.

If we’re moving you to Balmoral, then you are very lucky people. Beautiful houses, a beautiful beach, beautiful views and, by and large, beautiful people of whom you will soon be one. If you’re moving out, then you will have wonderful memories of the place and, hopefully, a massive chunk of money from the sale of your home. If, on the other hand, you’re ruined then you still have the memories and comfort of knowing that your pitiful remaining belongings are being moved out just as lovingly by Man and His Van as they were moved in during your pomp. Rich or poor our customers are our best friends and we always treat them accordingly.