The Ocean Beach Hotel, built by Henrietta Bush in 1929. Photo: Discover Shellharbour, Shellharbour City Council.
Sometimes the good and the great of Illawarra’s business, legal and agricultural bunyip aristocracies don’t always win out in cases of probate.
It’s very hard to control things from beyond the grave and this tale weaves together what happened when Shellharbour’s well-known raconteur Russell Hannah told me two members of these wealthy and influential Illawarra families died at the same time in 1978.
One family descended from E J Marks, born at Albion Park where his father, Samuel Marks, farmed before succeeding his brother, John Marks, MLC, at Jamberoo. He lived at Terragong in the fine old family home from the age of nine until his death.
The other family was the Cullens of Mt Johnson at Jamberoo, from where Sir William Cullen remarkably rose to become Chief Justice of NSW no less.
Members of these very extended families – comprising people with the surnames Lewis, Puttnam, Marks, Cullen and Bush – ended up having an interest in the wills of the owners of the The Ocean Beach Hotel at Shellharbour along with other Illawarra properties.
It all began with a woman named Henrietta Lewis, born at Kendal in England in 1878 and who arrived in Australia in 1885. Her father was a master joiner who worked as clerk of works, building both the Kensington Race Course and the Bank of Australia in Sydney.
His daughter, Henrietta, grew up to be a nurse and midwife and married Captain Edward Puttnam. She often accompanied him in the Auckland-built schooner “Minnie Hare” between Sydney and Fiji in the 1890s.
But in 1898, just three weeks after the birth of their daughter, Alice, Captain Puttnam had a heart attack and died.
Back in Sydney the widowed Henrietta married again in 1906 to Sydney hotelier Walter Bush who was some 20 years Henrietta’s senior.
But age and bad luck struck again after Henrietta and Walter Bush moved to Kiama to manage The Grand Hotel in Manning Street. There, in 1916, Walter had a stroke and died.
Widowed again and now with a son named Harry (born in 1911), Henrietta clearly needed help to manage the Kiama Hotel.
Possibly it was her well-off parents who provided assistance. And so, by the early 1920s, Henrietta was again cashed-up enough to purchase the 1891 New Royal Hotel located on the south west corner of Wentworth and Addison streets, Shellharbour.
By 1929, Henrietta had also bought the Seaside Flats at Shellharbour and her brother, Henry Lewis Jnr (who had obviously learnt much from his master-builder father) constructed The Ocean Beach Hotel at Shellharbour for Henrietta. It cost £8500 and the Kiama Independent reported it had “26 bedrooms with attractive gardens and grounds” and declared the pub to be “an ornament to Shellharbour and the South Coast”.
Meanwhile, Alice Puttnam (Henrietta’s daughter by her first husband) had in 1917 married the wealthy and well-connected Charles Clinton Cullen who, though he had been born in Figtree, had later moved to Rose Valley and become Mayor of Kiama.
Henrietta Bush was at the centre of one of the Illawarra’s early family dynasties. Photos: Discover Shellharbour, Shellharbour City Council.
The couple went on to assist Hazel Bush in the management of the Shellharbour Pub.
In turn, the child of Henrietta’s second marriage Harry Bush (born 1916 and a “well-known Shellharbour sportsman”) grew up to marry Miss Hazel Marks of Jamberoo in 1938. They made their home on the corner of Towns and Wentworth streets Shellharbour.
The directors of the Ocean Beach Hotel Pty Ltd (and also the Empire Hotel at Inverell and the other properties in Shellharbour) registered in July 1939 were listed as Henrietta Bush, Harry Bush, and Alice Cullen. The emerging partnership also built the shopping arcade in Addison Street Shellharbour.
Hazel and Harry Bush and Alice Cullen (even after her husband C C Cullen’s death in 1954) thus helped operate the company and seem to have taken near full control after Henrietta’s death in 1959.
But the fly in the appointment for inheritance came in 1978 when Harry and Hazel Bush were killed in a plane crash during a tour of America.
And the catch was that when a married couple dies in an accident and it cannot be determined who died first, the law applies a “legal fiction” to determine how assets are distributed.
In most Australian jurisdictions, this presumption dictates that the younger person is deemed to have survived the older person. And Hazel Bush (nee Marks ) was 71 and Harry only 66.
Thus it was Harry Bush’s will which took precedence. And – presumably because he and his wife Hazel were childless and may have at one time contemplated adoption – Harry had chosen to will some of his estate to Barnardos Australia.
Remarkably, that organisation still seems to own some Shellharbour property to this very day.
Had not the “legal fiction” of who died first operated, then the distribution of Harry and Hazel Bush’s assets may well have flowed to her Kiama and Jamberoo relatives.
In the absence of any children to inherit, even the family dog belonging to Hazel and Harry Bush, didn’t put in a claim for inheritance because, whenever in court, he was that very loveable kind of dog who only worked on pro-bone-o cases.
