By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
St Kilda’s renowned Tolarno Hotel, famed for its ground-floor restaurant with murals by Melbourne legend Mirka Mora, has been sold to a mystery local buyer.
The price? About $6 million, at the lower end of expectations. The buyer? Undisclosed, until now.
Tolarno Hotel owners Bernard Corser and James Fagan in front of a historic Mirka Mora mural in the hotel’s restaurant.Credit: Penny Stephens
After nearly 30 years, owners James Fagan and Bernard Corser put the hotel on the market. It was in 1995 that they bought the trophy building for $1.1 million after seeing an advert in The Age.
The property includes some Melbourne history: a ground-floor restaurant made famous by French immigrants Mora and husband Georges, who entertained the 1960s Melbourne elite with ebullient bohemian performances that helped to shape the city’s cultural and culinary life.
Later chefs Guy Grossi, Iain Hewitson and Leon Massoni had turns running the restaurant under various names. Oh, and the Fitzroy Street site has a 35-room hotel thrown in as well.
CBRE agents Scott Callow and Nathan Mufale did the deal, which settles on August 7.
Mirka Mora at the hotel in 1969.Credit: Fairfax Photographic
Local reports had the buyer as someone with “historical links to Melbourne’s food and hospitality scene”.
CBD can reveal that the local buyer is Gordan Marolt, who owns various backpacker accommodation companies. He was manager of The Coffee Palace, a 150-bed backpackers on nearby Grey Street in 1999 when he was quoted showing some local love in The Sunday Age. “St Kilda is heaven for the backpackers. The poverty and the penthouses ...”
Gina Rinehart has a new foreign admirer.Credit: John Shakespeare
The Age was unable to contact Marolt.
FOREIGN HONOUR
While controversies follow Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart around on home soil, the iron-ore magnate has won the admiration of Norodom Sihamoni, King of Cambodia. His Majesty has bestowed The Royal Order of Sahametrei on Rinehart, the highest award for non-Cambodians, in a recent ceremony.
While she can’t avoid the adverse publicity that comes with long-running legal battles with some of her own children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart, Gina Rinehart rarely speaks publicly about her charitable efforts in Cambodia.
The gratefulness of the Cambodians received far less publicity than Rinehart attracted after she failed to have Vincent Namatjira’s portrait of her from the artist’s Australia in Colour series removed from display at the National Gallery in Canberra.
The award from the king comes after she received the Angkor Award back in February from Scott Neeson, founder and executive chairman of the Cambodian Children’s Fund.
Shocked by reports of the country’s child sex trade, Rinehart established the Hope Scholarship program to help young Cambodian women from poor backgrounds gain a university education. Five years ago, at an event in the Pilbara, she spoke about rescuing nine girls from extreme poverty in Phnom Penh in 2007 and treating them as part of her family.
“Please welcome Channat, Pum and Sopheak, three of my Cambodian daughters, having their first visit to West Australia, and their first to our north,” she said in remarks reported by the Australian Financial Review.
“They started their lives very differently to each of us. They had to scavenge from sinking rubbish dumps in Cambodia, some of them sadly without parents. The rubbish dumps are not safe places for young girls.”
“Pum, Channat and Sopheak have become an inspiration for us all, from these terribly poor beginnings to becoming graduates from their respective universities with the help of our Hope scholarships.”
It’s another sign that while Rinehart often bristles at a perceived lack of love from the current Labor government, she’s got plenty of foreign admirers. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even personally launched her book on red tape in 2015.
TV writer and executive Bevan Lee.Credit: Seven
LEGACY LUXURY
It is cost-cutting season in Australian television and one of the biggest sequoias to topple in the forest is Bevan Lee, the TV drama executive who created Always Greener, Packed To The Rafters, Winners and Losers and A Place to Call Home. Back in the 1980s, he rescued the classic soap Home and Away, still in production today, by rewriting the first episode. He also worked on the TV classic Sons And Daughters.
Lee spent most of his career at Seven and said the call to leave came from the network but he left with gratitude.
“I’m 74 in November. I blinked and had turned into an old c---,” he told CBD.
“We live in the economic times we live in and they had to make choices. I had become a legacy luxury that had outlived its time. You can stay too long at the fair.”
He praised Seven drama mainstays Julie McGauran and John Holmes. “I hope those continuing the legacy of Aussie drama across all the platforms are lucky enough to share such warmth and fun as they ply their craft.”
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.