Reservoir: House featuring viral dolphin fountain that Sooshi Mango are eyeing off hits market
A quirky Reservoir house featuring a concrete dolphin fountain is ready for a grand sale after being dubbed 'Nonna's House of the Week' by a popular Instagram account.
The dolphin fountain was built by the home's late owner, Ignazio 'Benny' Di Benedetto, who migrated from Italy to Australia as a teenager.
A plasterer by trade and also an artist, Ignazio's residence has long been something of a local icon, photographed for books chronicling Australian front yards.
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The abode even counts Sooshi Mango among its fans with the comedy super group joking that they would buy the residence 'for the fountain alone' in response to an Instagram post about the house on the Yiayia Next Door account.
And it was another Insta page, Nonna's Judging You, that gave the three-bedroom pad at 3 Fiddes St its 'Nonna's House of the Week' honour.
The property, which has two bathrooms, a timber-fitted kitchen and double garage, is for sale with a $980,000-$1.05m asking range.
Ignazio's oldest child, Vito Di Benedetto, said he had enjoyed a wonderful childhood at the home with his father, mother Ida and siblings.
While he never specifically asked his dad the reason why he created the fountain, Ignazio had a love of architecture and art.
'To begin with, it was a simple fountain,' Mr Di Benedetto said.
'I'd say he started building the fountain in the very late sixties, and I think he probably would have finished it in the mid-eighties.'
A motor and pump were later connected, and the fountain still works today.
The family collected shells at Melbourne beaches to decorate the fountain.
As well, Ignazio would buy plastic containers in the shape of animals which had lollies or chocolates in them.
'He'd tell us to eat them as quickly as we possibly could – and being kids, were like, 'Wow, this is like Christmas',' Mr Di Benedetto said.
'So we'd eat them and then within weeks of us finishing them, he would fill those animals or containers with cement and then decorate them and put them on the fountain.'
After completing the fountain, Ignazio started buying imitation jewellery and frames to make murals.
Inspired by the town hall in the Sicilian village where he grew up, he hung throughout the house.
The artworks were taken down to repaint the home before it was put up for sale.
Mr Di Benedetto said that his family would be happy to give a few murals to whoever buys the house, if they were keen.
Ignazio's artistic talent can also be seen in pebble-mixed concrete columns that he crafted for the veranda and the backyard.
Inside, some of the ceilings feature decorative work, such as small, hand-cut pieces of plaster to create an artistic finish.
The formal lounge and dining area has what looks like a pressed metal ceiling which is actually made out of plaster.
Mr Di Benedetto said the producers of the 2022 movie Wog Boys Forever, starring Nick Giannopoulos and Vince Colosimo, contacted his family requesting to film at the home.
But Ignazio, who valued his privacy, declined the invitation.
'They ended up filming it in Reservoir at another house not far from where my Dad lived,' Mr Di Benedetto said.
However, photographer David Wadelton captured images of the fountain for his book Front Yards, showcasing character-filled Australian gardens and front yards.
Mr Di Benedetto said he hoped that whoever buys the house would keep the fountain, but it would be up to the individual purchaser.
Real estate agency Love & Co's Kannan Subramanian said the house had gone viral since being listed for sale.
'It's a very special home, it is quirky but functional,' Mr Subramanian said.
'It's a really good family home.'
Most of the interested buyers are families and young couples.
The house is close to public transport, Connor Reserve, the Merri Creek Trail and Edwardes Lake.
It will be auctioned at 1.30pm on May 24.
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The precise, unsentimental portrait of Melbourne youth culture at the time will immediately seduce and appal anyone who lived through it (raises hand), and for others, it serves as a welcome addition to the contemporary Australian grunge literature from that epoch – Luke Davies' Candy or Christos Tsiolkas' Loaded, say – which tended to be male-dominated. 1945 The Reckoning Phil Craig Hodder & Stoughton, $34.99 The title notwithstanding, much of Phil Craig's study of World War II and its aftermath deals with the war years leading up to 1945. And necessarily so. For what he is examining is the way in which, even as the war was being fought (and his descriptions of the action bring home just how bloody and violent it was), the peace was being planned. It's an epic canvas, ambitious, in some ways even Tolstoy-esque, taking in Europe, the Asia/Pacific and the quiet English countryside. 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And Netanyahu, whom he interviewed, emerges as a dedicated war leader – never mind that the ICC has issued a warrant for his arrest as a war criminal. Highly contentious. Often as not, this jaunty, serious and funny description of life as a criminal defence lawyer reads like dispatches from the law zone. Kalantar, an advocate and public speaker, recalls the day he decided to become a lawyer. He was seven, wrongly accused of making a face to his teacher and betrayed by a classmate, the injustice staying with him. Mind you, he initially took a wrong turn into banking, before an inspiring lecturer guided him into law. It's shot through with lessons from the coalface, especially in regard to making assumptions about accused clients – one, in particular, whom he dubs Genghis Khan, whose responses (through an interpreter) to questioning he completely misread. In another poignant episode, he outlines the way two close brothers fell out over the contents of their mother's will. In many ways, his subject is the human comedy in all its shades of dark and light. Not to mention courtroom stuff-ups and confessional moments such as his ADHD. Serious matters, but told with an ironic eye. In 1802, the father of the smallpox vaccine, Englishman Edward Jenner, was satirised in the papers, one cartoon depicting him injecting a terrified woman who is turning into a cow (the vaccine coming from cowpox). The scaremongering and pseudoscience surrounding vaccination, as epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre shows in this clear-sighted, plain-speaking study, goes back that far. And, after COVID, it has resurfaced again with the rise of anti-vaxxers. Astonishing, when we consider that vaccinations over the last 200 years have virtually eradicated deadly diseases such as smallpox and polio, which are particularly dangerous for children – infant mortality rates plummeting. Pseudoscience is in danger of destabilising the gains of science since Jenner's day, and this is both a reminder of the massive health achievements of the modern era and a timely wake-up call.
