Bee Gees House

For a couple of years from 1958 onwards, neighbours of this house would have been privy to the extraordinary harmonies of three young boys’ voices as they practised relentlessly, although only aged 12 and 9 at the time.

The Gibb brothers arrived in Redcliffe from England with their parents in 1958, originally living in a guesthouse at Margate before moving to this house and attending Humpybong State School. It was at the nearby Redcliffe Raceway where they worked selling refreshments that they were ‘discovered’, firstly by Bill Goode the Speedway owner/manager as they sang during intermission. He and the speedway crowds were suitably impressed and they soon had an official gig entertaining the masses during intermission. It was then that they were noticed by high profile radio DJ Bill Gates who got them onto radio.

With their 2 mentors both having the initials, B.G. the children chose the name that was to become one of the most recognised in the pop world in the latter 20th century. From here gigs also followed at the Palace Hotel at Margate and the children would later live towards that end of the peninsula at 394 Oxley Avenue and the now disappeared Cribb Island, although it is the Fifth Avenue house that is closely associated with them.