myilly point..burnett house

In the early 1930s, architect B.C.G (Beni) Burnett brought air, cool, ventilation and design into top end architecture.
In Darwin, he designed buildings that made the best use of the local climate and seasonal variations. In 1938 Burnett completed his Type K house (Burnett House), and this is it at Myilly Point.
He designed a series of homes for high ranking government officials adapted to the fearsome climatic conditions of the 'top end'. (I'm here in 'The Dry' and day temps are 33C!)
Using lightweight materials, corrugated roof cladding and a beautiful arrangement of louvered and fully opening casement windows to capture any breeze and use it to its very best. Verandas hug the whole house and in this particular house, surround an upstairs central room which opens out onto sleeping verandas through saloon type doors.
There are three other houses in this 'historical precinct' and they are all different in design and built to make the most of the their position on Myilly Point.

These houses survived the WW2 bombings of 1942 and Cyclone Tracy (just) and thankfully the wrecking ball.

'Beni Burnett was born in 1889 in the Ordos region of Mongolia. The son of Scottish and Welsh missionary parents, Beni was schooled in Edinburgh and Peking before beginning work as an apprentice at a leading British architectural firm in Shanghai. In 1914 Burnett married Florence Draper-Bentley, the daughter of an Australian mariner employed on the Yangtze River.
Burnett's first projects were residential accommodation for the huge influx of public servants coming to Darwin as part of the defence build-up in the pre-war years, and it was in Darwin that Burnett created perhaps his most distinctive and graceful buildings, designed to make living in the heat and humidity of the Top End more bearable. In 1938 Burnett completed his Type K house (Burnett House), the most celebrated 'variation on a theme' of a number of houses at Myilly Point.'