The 200 acres of land that embraced almost the whole of Bondi Beach came into O’Brien family ownership in 1851. The land, together with a small house known as Bondi Lodge or The Homestead, was purchased for £300 by Edward Smith Hall in trust for his daughter, Georgiana, who had married Francis O'Brien. She was his second wife - his first, Sophia, was Georgiana’s sister. Like many colonial families, the Halls and O’Briens were interconnected by friendship, community, business and marriage.

O’Brien, like his father-in-law, was involved in newspapers. In June 1838, O’Brien and his nephew Edwyn Henry Statham (the Government Printer between 1836-41) became editors of the rebranded Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, previously run by Hall. The following year, O’Brien married Sophia Statham Hall at St Phillip’s Church, Sydney. Their son, Francis, was born in August 1840.

The family lived at the O’Brien estate called North Dapto, near Gosford. O’Brien reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1846 that that property was ‘fit for the occupation of a gentleman's family, for which it was built, at a large outlay’. The area was painted by artist Conrad Martens in 1848.

On 10 February 1841, a special issue of The Monitor, complete with black border announced the death of 21-year-old Sophia Statham O’Brien, ‘beloved wife’ of the newspaper’s proprietor, Francis O’Brien, and third daughter of its founder, Edward Smith Hall.

Two years later, in 1843, O’Brien married Sophia’s younger sister Georgiana Elizabeth at ‘North Dapto’. Three years later, the property was advertised for lease. Early in 1851, members of the extended Hall-O’Brien clan took up residence at the Bondi Homestead.

In 1852 Hall and O'Brien tried to subdivide the land, advertised as "The Bondi Estate", but the sand hills failed to attract buyers. Hall began discussions with the Surveyor-General Sir Thomas Mitchell to sell the beachfront to the government for public use, but both men died before a deal was struck.

Between 1855 - 1877, O’Brien made the beach and adjacent land available to the public as a picnic ground and amusement resort. But by 1877 O’Brien had had enough of “public rowdyism” and wrote to Council asking for extra policing of the area. Twenty-five acres of land was resumed for public recreation in 1882. This established Bondi as a public beach, though still encompassed by sand hills and fringed by bushland.

The second Mrs O’Brien also died young and was laid to rest alongside her sister in the family’s mausoleum built at their Bondi estate. It was demolished in 1928 and 17 bodies were reinterred at Waverley Cemetery.

Images Courtesy the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection and the Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales.