Nearly 50 years ago Paul and Carol McCahon embarked on their dream to own a family home in the Springwood area.
At the time of purchasing their home on 44 Wootton Crescent in 1973, it was one of seven in the new residential estate, Mr McCahon explained.
“This was a new estate, there were 6 houses in our street that were going to be opened as a display village and the builders decided not to instead sell them off the plan, so we bought one of those.”
The house even came with the luxury of an ensuite. “They only came into vogue a year or so before as far as I’m aware,” he said.
Altogether, they paid $25,000 for both the land and home. “That’s for everything,” he added.
The property could now fetch between $600-700,000.
Last week, they listed it on the market to start accepting offers after calling it home for the last 48 years.
“At my age, I’m 76 now, the stairs and working around the yard are getting a bit of a bugbear for me, but ideally that’s the only reason we’d be shifting,” Mr McCahon said.
“Other than that, the home’s beautiful, it’s a nice area, and we have all the infrastructure here.”
As the property enters its first week on the market, the couple’s agent Johnson Teo from Ray White Springwood believes it could reach the $700,000 figure based on current sales in the area. “That tells me it’s very encouraging,” he said.
Mr McCahon said he has taken utmost care in maintaining the property over the years. The house has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a generous outdoor patio connecting to the living room, a decent grassed backyard, and a large downstairs area that could be converted into a separate children’s play or entertainment area.
The hardest part for Mrs McCahon is the thought of leaving the place where they raised their children and grandchildren.
“It’s going to be hard because it’s the only place we know, but it’s the right thing to do because all the children are settled and live their own lives,” she said.
The couple has seen their estate grow from a display home village without the nearby schools, shops, or public transport into the urban area it is today. “The area has just grown around us,” Mr McCahon said.
Around that time, they also opened one of the first supermarket stores in Daisy Hill called Cut Price before the major chains moved in.
“Just before Coles and Woolworths started their march, there used to be suburban stores like that around,” he said.
He also recalled how Daisy Hill only had a couple of hundred houses, that many of the main roads seen today did not exist, and that the lay of the land revolved around agricultural properties.
This was seen in the instance of Chatswood Road, which was a dead end up to where the BP service station is, only for this to change when the farmland in its path was sold off and developed.
