[1] Material in rock shelters reveals that Aboriginal people inhabited the surrounding region at least from the last ice age some 20,000 years ago.

Over the following century there were numerous documentary recordings of the movements of surviving Kuringgai people within the Ku-Ring-Gai locality, both attending Aboriginal gatherings and collecting European rations such as blankets.

In the 1890s a consortium of businessmen (Smith Burns and Withers) acquired acreage in Wahroonga and sold off lots in Junction Road and Kintore Street that included this land.

The decision to retain the native vegetation, rather than plant an English-style garden more typically associated with Georgian residences, was unusual and progressive for its time.

'[5][1] 'Recognition of the indigenous flora and its use in the vernacular, decorative and applied arts was characteristic of the federation period between 1890 and 1914, when Australia was searching for symbols of its new identity and independence.

After education at Fort Street Boys High, he entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon and graduated with a King's Medal in 1921.

While inevitably living in the shadow of his famous brother, whom he held in great esteem, Clive Evatt was a man of talent and significance in his own right.

[7][1] Cable remarks that with his qualifications and connections, Clive Raleigh Evatt was representative of a new generation of non-union, liberally minded men who stressed the need for Labor to appeal to a broad electorate.

John Gordon writes: 'Evatt, a colourful King's Counsel, a graduate of Duntroon Military Academy and younger brother of H. V. Evatt, showed himself to be a humanitarian reformer with a highly personalised style.

[11] Seidler has described his first visit to 69 Junction Road in 1950 as "momentous" and cites Evatt's support as persuasive in his decision to remain and work in Australia.

Nonetheless Harry Seidler's outstanding career was supported by the social connections forged through this prominent family, and initially at least, within this house.

[1] The ownership of the property was passed to grown up off-spring of Clive and Marjorie Evatt in 1970, although both parents continued to live in the house until their deaths, a few months apart, in 1984.

[1] The site contains approximately one hundred trees of predominantly locally indigenous native species, some of which may have existed prior to European settlement of the area.

A patron of the arts, Clive R. Evatt entertained widely and the home was frequented by significant artistic, academic, legal and Labor figures.

[15] The property is otherwise likely to be of local significance as a good example of a substantial Georgian Revival residence in the Ku-ring-gai area, designed by Stuart Traill, and still largely intact.

The "bush garden" setting for Evatt House is also of significance for its early attempt to maintain the ambience of indigenous Australian vegetation within suburbia.

When the bushland vegetation is seen in combination with the Georgian revival style of the house, the place clearly demonstrates the fostering of Australian cultural nationalism in the mid-twentieth century by the Evatt family.

The bush garden setting for Evatt House is of significance as an early attempt to maintain an ambience of "native bushland" in Australian suburbia.

Evatt as a new type of Labor politician who focused less upon working class values than upon the possibilities for social betterment, nationalist cultural development and human rights.

[1] The property is of local significance as an example of a substantial upper middle class residence set within landscaped gardens that typified the suburban development of Wahroonga in the mid-twentieth century.

[17] The fostering of the bush garden in association with a neo-Georgian styled house can be seen to be part of the Evatt's progressive, modernist patronage of Australian culture.

[1] Unusually for the late 1930s, the Evatts did not clear the grounds and design an English-style garden, but kept the indigenous trees, and planted some exotic species around the site.

However Apperley et al. also point to the nationalist significance of the style as the first conscious architectural movement within Australia to revive an early Australian idiom.

[17] The fostering of the bush garden in association with a neo-Georgian styled house can be seen to be part of the Evatt's progressive, modernist patronage of Australian culture.