Geoff Nadin – Author
Geoff 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 well worth the effort – this handsome book is Geoff’s 17-year long labour of love. He lives in a Stewart Dawson house in the Blue Mountains.
He is the author of Treasure House – The Stewart Dawson Story, which tells of one of Sydney’s most famous, some say, notorious families of the 20th century, now sadly, long forgotten. Millionaire jewellers and a few owners of some of Sydney’s prime commercial real estate that included The Strand Arcade, they rose from humble origins to a life of luxury, with many residences including at Potts Point, the Blue Mountains, London’s Mayfair and Monte Carlo. The patriarch, David Stewart Dawson combined emerging 19th century technology with a talent for marketing to break into the Australian market for pocket watches from far away England. He enjoyed the company of earls and princes, stars of stage and screen, politicians and poets. Today, the Stewart Dawsons are gone and forgotten, their decline through the Depression era and post-World War II ending in scandal and opprobrium.
In Australia, we celebrate the lives of convicts, settlers, soldiers and sporting heroes. The ‘Cultural Cringe’ grants less attention to people and achievements in commerce and culture, which motivated Geoff to tell this story.
