Great train robber Ronald Biggs' former Blackburn North, Melbourne hideout sold

The former home of notorious 1963 train robber Ronnie Biggs fetched $805,000 at weekend auction.

The fugitive and his ­family briefly lived under assumed identities at 52 Hibiscus Road, Blackburn North, in the 1960s. It last sold at $142,000 in 1993, having been briefly listed with $690,000 hopes in 2011.

It is not understood why the agency were giving $590,000 plus price guidance this time, especially as the neighbouring property had sold within the past year at $720,000 plus.

It was among the 1,310 auctions across 260 Melbourne suburbs this weekend – the highest volume so far this year. The REIV put the peak suburbs for auctions as St Kilda (25 auctions), followed by Reservoir (21 auctions), Hawthorn (21 auctions) and Brighton (20 auctions).

A clearance rate of 71% was recorded this weekend compared to 72% last weekend and 69 percent this weekend last year. There were 1,053 auctions reported to the REIV.

The Blackburn North house was advertised as a "family treasure" by the marketing agents Noel Jones Real Estate.

"Folklore has it that the screech of the police car's wheels could be heard all around this neighbourhood when they came for Ronald Biggs in 1969," auctioneer Martin Froese reportedly told the crowd.

Ronald Biggs fled to Australia after escaping a London jail in 1965, where he was ­serving a 30-year term for his part in the infamous train heist that netted around £2.6 million.

The modest brick veneer house was raided by police, who swooped on the property one evening in 1969 to find Biggs had fled that morning.

The unremarkable double-fronted brick veneer villa at Blackburn North was occupied for 18 months between 1967 and 1969 by a couple calling themselves Terry and Charmain Cook.

They were subsequently revealed as the notorious 1963 British train robber Ronald "Ronnie" Biggs and his wife, Charmain.

The $24 a week rented house (pictured below) was raided at 8pm on October 18, 1969 by police - the day after Biggs had fled following a news report that Biggs was working as a carpenter on the Tullamarine airport construction under the name of Furminger.

It was briefly advertised for sale with $690,000 hopes through the Noel Jones agency in early 2011 as a "three bedroom family home with vitality plus immediate appeal commencing with the eye catching front garden setting. The separate dining room and kitchen-meals overlook the generous rear garden - without doubt a delightful play area for children to enjoy - on its attractive allotment measuring 585 square metres in a neighbourhood that always holds its popularity and value."

No mention was made of its status amid the annals of Australian crime folklore.

Biggs, who died in December 2013, was the subject of a earlier 2013 Channel 7 mini-series, Mrs Biggs. Ronald Biggs's former wife, Charmain Brent, as she became known, assisted in the script of the British ITV production from her long-time Melbourne eastern suburbs home which she secured in the early 1970s.

The Hibiscus Road house has been written about in the James Cockington books, Mondo Weirdo and History Happened Here.

In 1960 Ronnie Biggs married Charmian. The Great Train Robbery of August 8, 1963 secured some £2.6 million from a mail train. After being convicted and jailed, he escaped from HM Prison Wandsworth in July 1965 by scaling the wall with a rope ladder. He fled to Paris, where he acquired new identity papers and underwent plastic surgery. 

Ronnie Biggs flew to Sydney, Australia on a BOAC flight under the name of a Terence Furminger on New Year's Day 1966. Charmain didn't come until June 1967, spending her first night in Darwin. 

The self-confessed green poms, with no idea, set out and drove from Darwin down to Tennant Creek, and then across through Cloncurry and Julia Creek. They settled in the Adelaide seaside suburb, Glenelg North.

In 1967 shortly after their third child was born, Biggs received an anonymous letter from Britain telling him that Interpol suspected that he was in Adelaide and that he should move. The South Australian 5KA radio announcer Maxwell Phillips had reportedly identified Biggs as Terry King, a boarding house proprietor from late 1966 to early 1967.

With jobs including working in set construction at Channel 9 Melbourne, Biggs and the family resided at Blackburn North, in Melbourne, Australia. The house, built by Monmia Developments within a Hooker Corporation land-subdivision estate, had been sold in 1964 and then rented out by its purchaser, a Richmond small goods distributor.

After his departure from Hibiscus Road, Biggs stayed at the $15 a night Alexander motel in Essendon for the first night. He then stayed at a cottage in Kalorama in the Dandenong Ranges which was raided in the week after his escape from the Victorian police. He'd fled it in the nick of time, just hours before the police raid, possibly because the local fire brigade had been testing its siren earlier that day which reportedly spooked Biggs.

After fleeing to Brazil via Panama in 1970, his wife and sons stayed behind in Australia. There was then the sad 1971 loss of their 10-year-old son Nicholas, who was killed in a car crash after the Biggs had departed Australia aboard the liner Oronsay in February 1970.

Ronald Biggs spent the next three decades of his life a fugitive in Rio De Janeiro, and became something of a media celebrity. In 2001 he voluntarily returned to the United Kingdom and spent several years in prison, where his health declined. In 2009 Biggs was released from prison. Charmain was reportedly the first person Biggs phoned after being released from jail.

Charmian flew to Britain from Australia in early 2012, just before filming began when she visited Ronnie who was ill, as although the couple had divorced in 1976 they remained on good terms.

Charmian appeared in the background of one of the five episode mini-series scenes - in the public gallery of the Australian court when the lawyer is arguing for her to be released.

It was her first appearance since her 2001 ABC Australian Story when she advised her wealth didn't stem from the robbery proceeds.

"I was paid $65,000 for the story but the tax man took $40,000 of it. It's a case that's in all the law books now. So I was left with enough money to buy this house which was $19,000 at the time," she said.