Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall clear Whale Beach clifftop for new mega-mansion
Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall have razed Dame Joan Sutherland’s house to build their mega-mansion on Whale Beach’s biggest waterfront property.
NSW
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It doesn’t look like much now, but this pile of dirt will soon become a stunning sandstone-clad mansion for Jennifer Hawkins and her builder husband Jake Wall.
They have plans for a three-storey home to span half the 50m ocean frontage and make the most of the 3070sqm Whale Beach property, the largest oceanfront estate on Sydney’s northern beaches.
It comes with an estimated $3 million construction cost, which will give them 700sqm of internal space — roughly three times the size of an average four-bedroom home — plus an extra 130sqm in balcony space.
The pair bought the decaying 1950s home of the late international soprano Dame Joan Sutherland, known as Rocca Bella.
Some 25 tonnes of concrete, 10 tonnes of timber, 50 cubic metres of bricks and 25 cubic metres of tiles is estimated to have gone to offsite recycling.
Hawkins and Wall bought the property for $6.95 million in July last year through LJ Hooker agent David Edwards.
Their Rayner Rd home site acquisition came a month after they scored a northern beaches record for Casa Paloma, their waterfront home-build at Newport that went for $24.5 million to Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and wife Annie.
Their plans for the next home show they will have five bedrooms, living and dining space, plus theatre, wine, rumpus and mud rooms.
The infinity-edge pool, along with “kids pool area” will be set amid landscaping by Michael Cooke, who has proposed grevillea moonlight, crimson bottlebrush and coast tea tree plantings. There will be a rainwater tank of 20,000 litres.
The signage shows the works are being undertaken by Wall’s company, J Group Projects, which has the slogan: “Building lifestyles of exception”.
The project start comes as NSW dwelling commencements are hitting record highs thanks to the HomeBuilder grant, supported by record low interest rates.
The celebrity couple’s pre-pandemic acquisition, which came with no registered mortgage, now comes with Westpac financing for its build.
And, as if they didn’t have enough happening, the couple are in a countdown to the birth of their second child. The former Miss Universe told her 878,000 Instagram followers they “feel blessed and couldn’t be happier to grow our little family!”
Their daughter Frankie Violet was born in October 2019. The couple are renting on the Central Coast, which fulfils Hawkins’ desire to be closer her parents, Robert and Gail.
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