By Tamara Hynd, curator of Shellharbour City Museum
Edwin Harold Klein was an eccentric to say the least. He had little education, made millions using unorthodox construction methods while working as a builder at Shellharbour, and purchased the famous Hillview estate at Sutton Forest.
Klein was born at Parkes in 1901, leaving school when he was about seven to help on the family farm after the death of his father. As a teenager, he built a home for his mother from concrete blocks. He had no training or experience, but having observed how houses in the area around him were built, he determined he knew how to build.
Edwin came to Shellharbour to build a holiday house for Miss Edith Fuller, daughter of George Laurence Fuller of Dunmore House. So began his ‘career’ in the building industry.
He drew up his own plans and contracts. Houses were nine to 10 squares, modest, built mostly of fibro. Kitchens and baths were built in. Tilux on splash-backs was used if tiles were too expensive. Unusual for the time, he bought cheap land and spec-built several houses alongside each other.
Edwin essentially sold house-and-land packages, and made a tidy profit. He believed everyone should own a home and built houses as cheaply as possible, at times advancing the deposit as an interest-free loan, enabling the client to get a bank loan.
The Shellharbour Building Register for the years 1923-1951 lists 125 dwellings, extensions, shops, garages and sheds built by E.H. Klein.
Well-known Shellharbour identity Russell East recalled his experiences working as an apprentice to Mr Klein.
“I will always remember my first week as an apprentice carpenter in the building industry. We were working in Kleinville, as we called it. Mr Klein had us clear a patch of ground about 30 feet in diameter. He then delivered about 20 loads of metal and sand on his Fordson truck, which we had to unload and mix together by shovel. This quantity would sometimes take us four or five days to turn twice. When it was mixed, he would deliver bags and bags of cement and then we would start to turn some of the pile again with cement, and then wheel the mixed concrete to say six house foundations that had taken weeks to dig, and then pour the concrete. This was his method of mass production, no mechanical tools whatsoever. I remember going home for lunch, not eating but having a sleep, and wondering how I was ever going to handle the building industry.
“The house we built in Gardeners Crescent for Mr Pemberton was part dug out on the adjoining property. When we noticed the mistake, Mr Klein said just cut the corner off the house as we were only in foundation stage and this was easy, but the house was always an odd shape on the northern side after that.
“We were never able to take time off for wet days, and one very wet day we were told we had to make a water tank in the front empty bedroom of the house! It was easy getting the tank sheeting through the corridor and into the bedroom because of its shape, but when we tried to explain to Mr Klein that when the 10,000-gallon tank was built we wouldn’t be able to get it out of the bedroom, he just yelled ‘Do as you’re told and build the tank’. We did, and when it was finished, we asked him how we were going to get it out of the house. He replied ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Well, then we had to demolish the front wall of the house to get the tank out, and rebuild the wall again.
“I remember once I was screwing in screws in a door hinge, as we were taught to do in college. Suddenly I received a boot in the backside and Mr Klein said the screwdrivers were only made to screw screws out, not in. ‘What do you think a hammer is for? Don’t waste time.’
“None of the houses he built had soft wood door jambs, as according to Mr Klein, this was a waste of money. We had to pick the best and straightest hardwood planks, plane them by hand and hang the door directly to them, so you can see why we had to use the hammer for the screws.
“When we constructed bathrooms, we never used concrete underneath the bath area as this wasted concrete. The floors were only two inches thick, held up mostly with formwork and at times reinforced with wire off old bed bases. I remember once I jumped from the first row of noggings to the floor and went straight through it. Mr Klein said, ‘I have told you before – never jump on the floors, you may go through them’.
“Most of our painting was done again by mass production. Paint from the store was too expensive, and so we made our own. One or two 44-gallon drums, three-quarter filled with fat and lard from the local butcher shop at no charge. To this we would add two sugar bags of rock lime. This would then be boiled off its head. We would add oxide to colour it, and the next four houses and fences were all painted the same ‘scheme’. Needless to say, lots of people had trouble removing the fat paint when they tried to repaint their houses.
“Regulation and approvals were not a problem in those days.”
During his years at Shellharbour, Edwin lived in a corrugated iron shack, only building a house for himself in Towns Street shortly before he left the village.
He retired from the building industry at 57 and 12 months later, in 1958, he purchased the historic NSW Governor’s summer residence ‘Hillview’ at Sutton Forrest for £35,000. The Parkes Government had acquired the property for £6000 for vice regal use, and spent £10,000 renovating it, causing a furious debate in the Legislative Assembly.
Edwin planned to turn the property into a retirement hostel for healthy seniors on low incomes. There were 50 rooms in Hillview and the aim was to have around 60 residents who preferred a quiet country environment and found pleasure in group activities, reading and philosophical discussion. He named it the Emma Louisa Klein Hostel, after his mother.
In 1958, three people came but they left before long, unable to cope with Klein’s strict set of rules, including regulations on snoring and a ban on discussing religion and politics other than on specially nominated occasions, determined by himself.
With the retirement home no longer in operation, Klein found himself the owner of an enormous property, however, he chose not to live in the grand house.
For 30 years he confined himself to the small cottage in the grounds that had once been the Aide-de-camp’s quarters. He set about developing the garden, working all day and well after sunset, by torchlight.
Before his death, in 1990 aged 89, he made arrangements to gift Hillview back to the State. The house was virtually left untouched during the 32 years that Klein owned it. The cupboards were full of utensils, glassware and china bearing the governor’s crest. The Chinese cabinet in the drawing room contained ancient sheet music for Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.
And in Shellharbour, you can still find evidence of his handiwork, if you know where to look.
To find about more about the history of Shellharbour City, visit Shellharbour City Museum’s online platform, discovershellharbour.recollect.net.au