Giraffe Early Learning Centre

Balgowlah Substation has been a well known civic brick landmark almost since it was built in 1928 in a wide suburban street in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. It was one of three similar Interwar Stripped Classical-style substation structures (the others were to serve the growing and then “far-reaching” suburbs of Pymble and Randwick). The Balgowlah Substation was decommissioned in 2011 and was sold by the New South Wales government in 2015.

The clients, at the time of purchase, had two other childcare businesses but had a passion for the building. Its location, opposite the local public school and firmly in the centre of a residential area, meant it had great