The auction house appeared to think that the interest may have been due to the feeling among local under bidders that Streeton's primary importance was as an official artist in World War I which is being heavily commemorated in the UK and many other nations.
The beach, however, looked more like a Sydney Harbour stretch rather than Gallipoli and some of the volunteers for the war underage, as they appeared to be two or three small children playing upon it.
The price otherwise did not appear to mark any particular international extension of the artist's reputation following the inclusion by fine examples of his work in the controversial Australia exhibition at the Royal Academy last year.
It went to a man in the room described as Australian. While our spies were not able to ascertain who he was, the usual suspect, Denis Savill, is travelling the world and is reported to have gone to the US.
The buyer could be an expatriate as the price could be a little rich for the arbitragists.
None of the furniture lots made big money but about a dozen stylish pieces with references to the the Neo Gothic, Puginesque and William and Mary styles sold well.
They represent some of the best decorative taste in English and French furniture and clearly once furnished Fairfax's English retreat.
One of the best selling lots was a a pair of mahogany bergere chairs provenanced to Carlton Hobbs which was estimated at £500 to £1000, and sold for a hammer prices of £3400. Most of the lots were otherwise around a hammer price of £1500.
These admittedly were small treasures but they have an associational value being some of the very few objects bought over the years from London's Mayfair antiques trade.
With former Prime Minister Paul Keating and semi retired auctioneer Mr Geoff Gray, the media tycoon was one of the few Australians of substance to trawl the Bond Street antique shops.
Unlike Christopher Skase and Alan Bond the purchases were well considered collectables and paid for out of his own funds, not borrowed.
He is possibly the only one of his surviving generation who could be considered for membership of the world's top 200 collectors and figured in the Artnews New York annual list of the same for several years.
John Schaeffer's sortie into the Pre Raphaelite market might just make him another and he was briefly included before his financial position took a tumble.
Fairfax's Australian art collection was sold at an auction at the Art Gallery of NSW in the late 1980s.
He was swept up in an Australian enthusiasm for Old Masters when Thomas Agnew & Son, the Bond Street art dealership held exhibitions at David Jones Art Gallery in Sydney in the 1970s and has been associated with a push which added an extraordinary amount of sales tax to overseas art purchases at the time.
Sales tax was removed but eventually came back in a different form as the GST, later with the exception that Australian works also became taxable on entering Australia, albeit at a lower rate.
The Old Master and antiques market in which Mr Fairfax was associated have both been hit by changes in taste to the modern.
Mr Fairfax sent some of the better remaining works for sale in New York later as he switched his philanthropic interests to more humane causes.
Like most donors to Australian institutions, he gave under the Cultural Gifts Progam which made them eligible as tax deductions.
The latest tidying up, in a way, represents the end of an era as people in Australia do not collect in this direction any more.
The sale of the Streeton follows a big price for another small 12.7 cm by 35.4 cm example at Mossgreen in June this year, Ariadne which made $410,000 hammer ($500,200 IBP).
The Fairfax Streeton measured 29 by 34 cm.
