Jam-packed with beautiful memories.

"Dad was painting from a very early age," says his son, Ben Eadie. "His first memory was of a table he used to lie underneath and paint." That instinct never left him. Robert went on to become a multi-year Archibald Prize finalist, and a driving force behind East Sydney Tech's transformation into the National Art School - also helping to shape a national art curriculum where none had existed before. His legacy, artistically, is substantial.

But it's the house that carries the quieter version of that story. "When I picture my father in this house, I picture him in his studio, peaceful, creative, painting, leaning across his desk with one of his crayons or his acrylics," Ben recalls. "It's a little bit chaotic - because there were certain things he didn't look after. But what he did do was imbibe everything with his own creativity and art. It really has the sense of an artist's house."

That sense lives on in the details, on the walls, in the light of the studio, in decades of gatherings that filled the rooms. "It was a house where he could express his creativity through his work, and also display the creativity of him and his close friends on the walls around him," Ben says. "It became a sanctuary for him, a safe place."

For Ben, walking through it now is a mix of loss and gratitude. "I feel honoured that I got to grow up here, to experience the creativity of this house, the parties of the 60s, the family get-togethers. Emotionally, it's jam-packed with beautiful memories."

Darlinghurst has changed around it, but the house has kept its own rhythm. As Ben puts it, whoever takes it on next will come to know it, and love it, just as his family did.

"I hope it becomes a place of their own creativity, and their own expression."

View the listing: 228 Palmer Street, Darlinghurst