Tone Wheeler
Formidable designer Derek Wrigley, passed away last month, aged 97. You can find his obituary on the ArchitectureAU website and the DIA’s (Design Institute of Australia) website. I knew and worked with Derek for some years in Canberra and I think his design interests were so broad and deep that his exploits could have filled four lives.
Architect
Derek Wrigley graduated in architecture from the Manchester College of Art in 1945 and worked briefly in the UK before emigrating to Australia in 1947. Very soon he purchased an abandoned quarry in Dee Why on the NSW Northern beaches for £100, and he set about building a house, which he called OB1 (for owner builder).
John Mayall and
John Mayall and
(from left) his tree house, Lead Belly and a copy of Weird Tales. Composite: Getty/Alamy
As a huge box set of his work is released, the 87-year-old British bluesman reminisces about the thrill of discovering boogie-woogie piano and buying his first six-string in Japan
Fri 29 Jan 2021 04.00 EST
My tree house
I lived in Acre Lane in Cheadle Hulme, Greater Manchester, and became a teenager on 29 November 1946. My parents had divorced and I lived with my mother and my grandfather. The house was a bit crowded, so I built a tree house in the garden, which basically became my room, my world. I built it with window frames and tarpaulin, but eventually it had a paraffin lamp, a bed and all my 78rpm records and such up there. It was about 25ft (7.6 metres) up an oak tree.