Sydney’s elite head to Southern Highlands for COVID-19 lockdown
There has been a population boom south of Sydney where celebs and wealthy types are hibernating amid the COVID-19 lockdown. Sydney’s elite have jumped into their fancy cars to head to their retreats - Don Harwin-style - to enjoy the cool open spaces and leafy mountain plateaus, Annette Sharp reveals.
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The Southern Highlands is experiencing an unseasonal population hike with the COVID-19 lockdown driving many of Sydney’s elite into their Ferraris, Bentleys and Mercedes and on to the Hume Motorway to make a chic retreat, Don Harwin-style, to the cool open spaces of the leafy mountain plateau.
While some were already in residence at their Highlands’ estates when the government ordered the population’s confinement a month ago, others seized the opportunity to dash away to well-stocked trophy homes where they might isolate in verdant seclusion and enjoy neglected passion projects.
For Jimmy Barnes and wife Jane, isolation began early when the couple were forced into a 14-day quarantine in mid-March after arriving home from a luxury holiday in Asia where the couple treated themselves to an adventure on the Orient Express and enjoyed the best rock and book publishing revenues can buy at the refurbished Singapore hotel, Raffles.
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Since returning to Berrima, on about March 18, the couple’s neighbours have been treated, apparently daily, to the sound of Barnes’s signature throaty croon as the rocker serenades social media fans also locked down.
When not accompanying her husband on guitar, an amused Jane has taken the shears to her old man’s head, but not before first wrapping the semi-naked ageing rocker in plastic.
The things long-term married rock stars do when shut away from the world for an extended period.
The couple’s neighbours seem, fortunately, to be a good-humoured bunch well accustomed to the sounds emanating over the Barnes’ back fence, among them, somewhat bruisingly two years ago, the sound of a novice piper at his bellows after Scottish-born Barnes took up the bagpipes.
Another sound wafting over the imposing brick boundaries of nearby Fitzroy Falls of late is the giggle of radio broadcaster Alan Jones, who, at almost 80, has taken to bouncing on a backyard trampoline to keep the isolation blues at bay.
Footage of the prostate-jolting stunt — although Jones is believed to be minus his following surgery for prostate cancer in 2015 — incredibly found its way to Jones’s Instagram page this month.
There, Jones, dressed in green shorts and a smile, can be seen chortling, though getting zero
air, on an enclosed trampoline.
“Here you are Munsie. I’m here. You said I couldn’t do it. Isn’t it? AJ on the trampoline,” Jones, like a triumphant two-year-old, proclaims to a unseen camera person.
The bounce occurred after Tabcorp media man Glenn Munsie bet Jones he wouldn’t do it.
At Sutton Forest, — where Nicole Kidman’s sister Antonia was, pre COVID-19 pandemic, making preparations for her sister and young family’s return, fashion designer Leona Edmiston has been chipping away at the details of her latest collection while home schooling twin daughters Dylan and Dusty, organising Easter eggs hunts and celebrating the girls’ 8th birthday (born via a US surrogate).
Media boss David Leckie, who generally enjoys having the family’s Robertson retreat to himself, has had a full house after socialite wife Skye and adult sons Harry and Ben moved home.
The family excitedly showed off a new monogrammed doormat, the “MF” representing the name of the property, Mulberry Farm, and not a comment to pandemic refugees seeking sanctuary.
Further along at Mount Murray, television presenters Jennifer Byrne and Andrew Denton are in cosy repose, Byrne regularly sighted navigating the region’s bush
tracks where she’s a keen walker.
Businessman Theo Onisforou and his adult children Angus and Stephanie have been sighted tending cattle at their Angus stud while nearby the lights have been on at Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes’ new $12.5 million Kangaloon stud, Widgee Waa.
Following Samantha Armytage’s swift return to work a week ago — she hounded Seven bosses for a return date, not the other way around, is how we hear it — there have been too few single women repairing in the Highlands.
Luckily Marly Boyd, the glamorous young socialite wife of property developer John Boyd, manages to quicken pulses and keep all enthralled.
She has been admired coming and going from the couple’s Highlands retreat — possibly to the family coastal retreat at Palm Beach where Boyd is in residence — in a sweet red vintage convertible, a poster girl for COVID-19 recovery and carefree youth.
Originally published as Sydney’s elite head to Southern Highlands for COVID-19 lockdown