The location used for the Marne residence, childhood home of Erica and James Marne, is Burnham Beeches in Sherbrooke, in the Dandenong Ranges. Completed in 1933, the three-storey Art Deco Streamline Moderne mansion was built (along the shape of an ocean liner) for pharmaceutical magnate Alfred Nicholas, who had made his fortune developing and selling Aspro painkillers. After his death his widow left the area, and from 1955 onwards the Nicholas Institute utilised the house as a facility for medical and veterinary research.