Spot where AC/DC first rehearsed

The Young family moved to 4 Burleigh Street in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Burwood in 1965, after emigrating from Scotland. It was here, in a working-class terrace house in one of Sydney's more modest suburbs, that Malcolm and Angus Young started AC/DC in 1973. Malcolm was 19; Angus was 18 and still attending the nearby Ashfield Boys High School — the school whose grey uniform he would adopt as his iconic stage costume. The first rehearsals took place in and around the family home before the band moved to a space above an office in Newtown.

The significance of Burleigh Street to AC/DC's story is enormous. It was in this neighbourhood that the Young brothers developed the blueprint for a band built on relentless riffing, volume, and attitude — a sound shaped by the working-class streets around them as much as by the blues records and Chuck Berry albums they absorbed in the back bedroom. Angus's schoolboy outfit, inseparable from AC/DC's identity, came directly from these streets.

Tragically, the Burleigh Street house was demolished by property developers in 2024 — apparently without the heritage protections that might have saved it. The band expressed their disappointment publicly, and the loss of the building highlighted how many significant Australian music sites have slipped away without formal recognition. A plaque or marker on the site would be a fitting memorial.