Annette Sharp: Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin downsize as daughter Lilly moves out

The relisting of Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin’s swank New York townhouse merely marks the couple’s transition to empty nesters, writes Annette Sharp.

The relisting of Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin’s swank New York townhouse merely marks the couple’s transition to empty nesters, so Luhrmann told US media last week.

We take it the couple’s eldest child Lilly, who turns 20 next month, is preparing to return to Queensland to resume her studies at Queensland University.

Lilly is in the second year of a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies — a class that hardly suggests an interest, at this time at least, in following in the famous footsteps of her film industry parents.

There has been no word as to what her younger brother William, 18, is currently doing, but it seems he too has left the nest.

Last weekend, as the film world absorbed the shock news that Luhrmann’s friends Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness were separating, the creators of Moulin Rouge!, Australia and Elvis were sunning themselves in Europe.

Baz Luhrmann (centre) and Catherine Martin with daughter Lilly (left) in Europe last week. Picture: Instagram

The Luhrmanns spent recent weeks absorbing the sights and flavours of Paris and Venice, a trip that coincided with the film director’s 61st birthday.

Their jaunty family snaps, posted to social media, sat in stark contrast to those emanating from the accounts of Jackman and Furness during the same period.

Luhrmann and Martin are selling their New York townhouse now that their children have flown the coop. Picture: Nina Poon

For many celebrity couples, and certainly for the Jackman/Furnesses, a house sale or property transaction can be the first sign their marriage is on the rocks.

(The second sign is the youngest child has turned 18, the third is the death of a significant parent or mentor, the fourth, the sudden disappearance of a close member of the professional team or household …)

Happily, it seems the Luhrmann union is as stable as it’s always been, and they’re just choosing to spend more time in Australia post-Covid.

NINE HOPING FOR A MORE MATURE MCDONALD FOR HADLEY GIG

Nine Radio will be hoping former TV newsreader Bill McDonald has matured since he joined rival media company Seven a decade ago.

Radio presenter Bill McDonald. Picture: NCA NewsWire

McDonald was last week parachuted in as a replacement for Ray Hadley in the morning slot at radio 4BC in Brisbane.

It struck many — Hadley included, we hear — as a surprise appointment.

McDonald left Channel 7 in 2018 after a four-year term presenting the evening news in Brisbane alongside Sharyn Ghidella.

His arrival at Seven, like his departure, made headlines.

In 2013, just weeks after joining the network from Ten, a poor taste comment from the father-of-four on Facebook embarrassed the network after McDonald posted and passed comment on a picture from comedy site Meanwhile In Australia, which showed a slice of Australian landscape that some felt resembled female genitalia.

“It really is a wide brown land down there!” McDonald wrote online, before apparently realising the comment was not appropriate for a network news anchor.

When he resigned from Seven in March 2018, he and Seven both denied the split was anything but amicable.

This despite McDonald leaving a sketch of a hand “flipping off” unknown parties on the network’s “farewell wall”.

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