View Tukurua from Rosendo Street near Marine Parade, outside numbers 5 and 7. Stay on the public footpath; the house and garden are private.
Architect R. T. McMaster designed the original house, built by Bunning Brothers in 1896. J. Talbot Hobbs made alterations the following year and returned in 1901 to design the second storey. The result is a substantial Federation Filigree residence, with limestone walls, contrasting brick around openings and broad timber verandahs that once offered sweeping views towards the ocean. Its size and setting give a good sense of the affluent summer-house lifestyle that developed along this part of Cottesloe in the late nineteenth century.
Its story didn't end with the Burt family. By the 1920s it was operating as a boarding house under the name Tukurua, and during the Second World War it accommodated refugees from Singapore. The house was later divided into apartments before being gradually restored by subsequent owners.
Andrew and Nicola Forrest bought Tukurua in 2015, and in a remarkable echo of its wartime history, the house again became a temporary refuge for families displaced by conflict. Inspired by their daughter Grace, the Forrests accommodated five refugee families, including people from Syria and Iraq, before undertaking extensive conservation and redevelopment of the property. The original house remains the heritage centrepiece of the site and was permanently entered on the State Register of Heritage Places in 2020.
You'll find Tukurua set back on the corner of Rosendo Street and Marine Parade. It remains private property, so enjoy the architecture from the public frontage. Nearby Le Fanu makes a particularly good comparison - two grand coastal houses from a similar era that went on to live very different lives.
Heritage Council of WA - Tukurua