The mossy stones which border the pathway into Burnett House are relics from Vestey’s
Meatworks. Vestey’s Meatworks was a large abattoir set up in 1914 by the British Vestey
Brothers, who were once the largest meat conglomerate in the world. Vestey’s was the most
ambitious economic venture in the Northern Territory for its time, but it ultimately failed,
causing hundreds of locals to lose their jobs. The Meatworks’ closure partly triggered the civil
unrest of the 1918 Darwin Rebellion. Vestey’s Meatworks once stood on Bullocky point, where
Darwin High school now stands. That these stone were salvaged from the site also reveals the
scarcity of building materials in Darwin at this time.
Burnett house is named after the architect who designed it: Beni-Carr Glynn Burnett. Burnett
also designed some of the other residences at the Myilly Point Heritage Precinct and was the
architect for more than 100 buildings in the greater Darwin area and in Alice Springs, where
he spent the latter years of his life after being evacuated from Darwin after Japanese air raids
in 1942.
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1 Northern Territory Planning Commission, Kahlin Compound and Old Darwin Hospital site and Flagstaff Park:
Community Consultation (Northern Territory: NT Planning Commission, 2014), 6. 1 Larrakia Nation, ‘The Larrakia People’, Larrakia, 2. What area is Larrakia Land, http://larrakia.com/about/thelarrakia-people/ ,accessed 15 Dec. 2020. 1 D. Bridgman, ‘BCG Burnett: Architect’, final year Batchelor’s thesis, RMIT University, Melbourne,
1994, 6.
