Model Air Raid Warden Training Buildings - two story redbrick bungalow with garden

Model wooden two storey suburban redbrick bungalow with side wings painted red with a blue roof. The main roof is made of metal, nailed to the house, while the two side wing roofs are wooden. A blue painted line divides the stories of the house around 30mm from the base. There is a crack painted black down the middle of the front of the house, in a stepped pattern, to represent bomb damage. Seventeen windows around the house have been painted blue with a silver outline. The bungalow is based on a piece of green painted wood, forming a garden for the house and includes a round bush painted green as a garden feature. Next to the bush is a hole where another bush may have been located.

Collection of twelve (12) painted wooden and metal buildings representing houses, churches and civic buildings, some with bomb damage. They are meant to represent the section of the northern Sydney suburb of Wahroonga for which Dr William Read was the responsible warden and were regularly used for weekly Air Raid Precaution (ARP) training and large scale exercise planning sessions at his home at Cleveland St, Wahroonga. A keen carpenter, Dr Read created the buildings and originally based them on a board, painted to represent the streets in his suburb, and his daughter states "He used these to play 'war games' with his fellow wardens and had them set up on the verandah of his home." Dr Read had served in Egypt at No 2 General Hospital with the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) during the First World War, to the extent of moving his wife and three children to Cairo to be close to him. Upon his return to Australia, he ran the Hospital at Georges Heights which had been set up to receive the Gallipoli wounded.