PORT Stephens has many fascinating stories about its past.
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But often it's the seemingly unassuming people who have lived there who have the most intriguing stories of them all.
One such individual was the late Mrs Helen Taylor, the matriarch of historic Tanilba House, on Lemon Tree Passage peninsula, who suddenly passed away last month aged 79 years.
Strong, intelligent and fiercely independent, she loved classical music and lived at the heritage-listed stone home surrounded by her beloved pets for about 30 years to become a patron of the arts.
Her zeal and passion for history meant she kept her historic Port Stephens waterfront home open to the public for decades, long beyond what people expected.
A cursory examination of her background might only reveal she was born in Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, in 1936, to a Czech mother and German father. She was the daughter of the remarried Helena Oberland and sister to Suzanna and Georgina and also the dearly beloved mother of Alexandra von Rabenau and Christopher Taylor.
Nothing unusual so far, some might say.
What the thumbnail sketch doesn't reveal is that she and her family made a deliberate decision ages ago to buy and save Tanilba Bay house from demolition when few people knew or cared.
That was in 1968, but then in 1980 the state government stepped in and, realising its importance, placed a permanent conservation order on the property, but without giving any regular grants to help with its upkeep.
Today the house, probably from 1834, is an icon of Port Stephens, having being built by convict labour for Royal Naval Lieutenant William Caswell, one of the district's pioneers.
Helen Taylor was also a baroness by birth. She, her mother, stepfather and younger sisters abruptly came to Australia and started the famous Alcron restaurant on The Hill, Newcastle, after fleeing the 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia when family estates were being confiscated.
Helen was the eldest child and so as not to frighten her, her mother told her to pack for a week's holiday.
The traumatised family first went to Greta Migrant Camp as stateless refugees, speaking little English. Her mother, Mrs Oberland, pawned her jewellery to allow the dispossessed family to get a toe-hold in the Newcastle property market by buying a small Mayfield cottage.
Soon this was sold to buy an old terrace in Church Street, city, which when converted became the Alcron, being named after a prestigious restaurant in Prague.
This became Newcastle's first brush with cosmopolitan cuisine from 1951. Everyone from entertainers, artists and even prime ministers then visited the site over the five decades it existed.
"I was only ever taught two words coming on the ship [to Australia]. They were, 'keep smiling'," Helen Taylor once told me.
"It's funny thinking back now, but schnitzel and even spaghetti bolognaise were exotic rarities on Newcastle menus after World War II."
And here, daughter Alexandra von Rabenau takes up her mother's intriguing life story.
"My mother was what I'd call old school; a type of character that doesn't seem to exist much any more; Renaissance-type people," she said.
"Hers was a generation of strong-willed Newcastle women, many of whom, sadly, are also now gone, like theatre owner Margaret Goumas and [larger-than-life real estate agent] Sonia Walkom," Ms von Rabenau - her mother's maiden name - said.
"What people mightn't realise is that mum was a talented artist in her younger days who painted a mural in the Great Northern. She even entered a Miss New Australian pageant and won a trip to Tahiti after raising the most funds for a United Nations Children's Appeal. Refugees were welcomed in Australia back then. Imagine holding such a contest now.
"Her grandfather was also an aide, I believe, to Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm and another relative [General] Friedrich von Rabenau was murdered by the Nazis after being part of a plot to kill Adolf Hitler," she said.
Ms von Rabenau said the Herald wrote up her mother in a 1956 article, describing her as a then 20-year-old honey blonde beauty of aristocratic bearing who returned from Germany in late 1955 after 18 months working overseas, studying art and living with her father in Munich.
Over there, she began a career in set design and in the movies, working in a Bavarian film studio and meeting stars like Gina Lollobrigida, Ingrid Bergman, Peter Ustinov and Sophia Loren.
Then and later on, she was wary of her title of baroness.
"What does it matter? All it will do is get you a room in a hotel," she'd say.
Back in Newcastle, Helen then helped run the Alcron restaurant for years with her mother.
Ms von Rabenau herself remembers it as an exciting place with personalities aplenty.
"For example, every Thursday night Professor Brin Newton-John - Olivia's father and a former spy maybe - and Professor Godfrey Tanner would always dine there," she said.
Her mother lived at Tanilba House from the mid-1980s and, after the Alcron closed, she focused more on staging exhibitions, plays, poetry readings and concerts in her historic home.
"Mother was plain speaking and she might crash tackle you in an argument, then afterwards, offer you a cup of tea. She didn't hold a grudge," her daughter said.
"She also knew more about Australian history than many and had a command of the English language that put us born here to shame. Her collection of early [Australian] history books was quite remarkable.
"It was quiet a shock then when she went as she wasn't sick at all," her daughter said.
"Tanilba House, which she co-owned with a relative, is obviously no longer open and we're discussing its future."
One suspects if it wasn't for the Oberlands, who began leasing the house in the 1950s, and Helen Taylor, the historic hill house, the first on the peninsula, would have been torn down and the site smothered in cheap holiday flats long ago.
As it was, remote and unloved Tanilba House was once left deserted for 20 years up to the early 1890s and was even described then as Caswell's beautiful white elephant.
Helen Taylor breathed life into it, giving the public a rare opportunity to get a glimpse into how life was lived in the 1830s.
Ironically, she lived at Tanilba House for about twice as long as its original inhabitants, the pioneering Caswells.
I, for one, will sorely miss her.