Treasure House is the story of the rise and fall of a family dynasty that you may have never heard of. The Stewart Dawson name was once associated with Australian retail royalty such as Mark Foy and Anthony Hordern. While these names have left their mark in one way or another, the Stewart Dawson legacy has disappeared almost entirely from our collective memory.

David Dawson, the family patriarch, was raised in the Scottish Highlands and seems to have been blessed with a particular brand of enterprise and an excellent sense of timing. David eventually relocation to Glasgow, where the seeds of a business were sown. A well-judged expansion into the Australian market catapulted the now rebranded David ‘Stewart’ Dawsons into the upper echelon of society. By the 1920s they were the leading jewellery retailers in Australia.

But excess soon followed the success and subsequent generations of the Stewart Dawsons, and David himself, fell victim to their own hubris. Questionable business decisions, marital duplicity, fraud and criminal violence all contributed to the squandering of the family fortune. Treasure House is a comprehensive, detailed and fascinating slice of Australian social history that’s well worth picking up.

Reviewed by Gregory Dobbs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Geoff Nadin is a retired business consultant who wrote too many dry-as-dust reports for too many indifferent readers. Seeking an outlet for his unacknowledged talents, he turned over a stone and found, right on his doorstep, a whole world hidden in plain sight: the long-forgotten saga of the Stewart Dawsons. The path it took him on was long and winding, the goal sometimes out of reach. But the reward was worth the effort, he thinks. With several short stories already published, poems, and a possible novel in the pipeline, he’s playing the literary field, enjoying every minute of it. Geoff lives in a Stewart Dawson house in the Blue Mountains.