If Richard Bliss hadn’t forgotten his wife Nola’s birthday, the couple might never have become the owners of Faversham House, Western Australia’s oldest inland mansion.
Richard and Nola were dealing antiques in Cheltenham in the English Cotswolds and Richard recalls the fateful forgotten birthday as the last straw in a week crammed with auctions, viewings and demanding clients. When he finally remembered Nola’s birthday — too late in the day to buy a gift — he made a hasty substitution by digging out a painting he’d bought earlier at auction for 15 pounds.
“At the time I recognised it as being in the style of Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes,” Nola recalls. “But because of the price Richard had paid for it, it
